Bill Johnson - The Honorable Walk of Authority, An Invitation
Peace, as a person, you and I are brokers of divine encounters. If we live in a place of yieldedness and surrender to the purposes of God, He uses these simple moments to bring people into an awareness of God’s love, God’s power, God’s presence. Authority goes to the root cause of the cycle of loss and death and the things that are so unjust.
Well, good morning! Good, good, good, good, good to see you. I have so many great things to share with you. Now that I’ve lived through an actual plague, I totally understand why Italian Renaissance paintings are full of naked fat people lying on couches.
«Hey Dad, this spider bit me! Am I going to become Spider-Man?» «No, this is Australia. You’re going to die.»
Childhood injuries: fell off my bike, fell out of a tree, skinned my knee. Adult injuries: slept wrong, sat down too long, sneezed too hard. I’m on my second guardian angel; the first one quit and is now in therapy. My wife tells me I have two major faults: I don’t listen, and something else. My grandpa told me that he got to see the Titanic, and from the beginning, he told them not to get on board because he knew it was going to sink. No one listened to him; he repeatedly warned them until the minute he got kicked out of the theater.
Now this one is profound and needs to be done: a million-dollar idea: a smoke detector that shuts off when you yell, «I’m just cooking!» Yeah, I’m pretty sure that would do quite well.
Day 12 without chocolate: I lost the hearing in my left eye. I’ll end with this: this is actually a package of bacon. It says cooking instructions: pan-fry slowly on low-medium heat until bacon renders and is cooked to your desired crispness. If you really don’t know how to cook bacon, please contact your elected officials and complain about our educational system. Every American should know how to cook bacon. Seriously, that, to me, is a word of wisdom right there.
Alright, the last few times I’ve talked, I think in the last several times I’ve spoken in the past two months, I’ve addressed the subject of power and authority, and I’m going to continue the subject today. To be honest with you, I’m trying to talk my way into understanding something that I sense the Lord saying and doing. I feel like I’m seeing something through glass darkly; I see shapes and I’m trying to describe the shapes. I’ve emphasized power, the manifestation of power, for a long time, and I’ve been having a rising conviction in my heart that I need to relearn the subject of authority. So that’s what I’m going to talk to you about.
There are a lot of parallel subjects in the Bible: Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Man, intimacy with God, friendship, servanthood. These are a lot of parallel gifts of the Spirit, fruits of the Spirit; there are many parallel subjects that are best defined by each other. It’s the two together. Forgive me, but I have issues when I hear people use the word «balance» because balance usually, in application, means that place in between joy and depression. I’m not interested in balance. If balance means being red-hot for the Word of God and red-hot for the Spirit of God, then call me balance; that’s what I want to be. But typically, that’s not the expression, so I manifest just a little bit. I feel better now; I’m okay.
So what I want to talk to you about is—I need to review. Jesus came to Earth having been commissioned by the Father. He came to Earth with authority because He came with an assignment. He came specifically to reveal the Father and to destroy the works of the evil one. Those were the two primary assignments. I’ve made a list before; there are many things that He obviously came to do, but first and foremost, His top priority was to reveal the Father, and secondly, as found in 1 John 3:8, He came to destroy the works of the evil one.
The point is that He came with an assignment; He came with a commission. Christ just defined this for us years ago in a way that really helped me. He says, «When you’re in submission to the primary mission, you can be commissioned.» So the commissioning comes because we’ve embraced the primary assignment and are embracing what God values and what He wants to do. Our «yes» is what measures the realm of authority that we actually walk in. Authority is given to us to build, and I’ll try to describe that a little bit better in a minute.
Power through our lives introduces people to the superior nature of an unseen world. Power brings people into an encounter with God. Jesus came to Earth with authority, but I don’t believe He came with power as God obviously has all power and authority. But He restricted His life to human form, and as such, He needed to get power in the same way His followers would some years later. His power came in the water baptism when the Holy Spirit came upon Him in the form of a dove and remained. In that power, He encountered the heavens open, and the voice of the Father came forth. In the very next scene, we see Him in the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and then He goes on from there displaying power. It all started in that water baptism that became a Holy Spirit baptism.
The point is for us: our authority comes in the commission; our power comes in the encounter. Jesus modeled something that could be duplicated, must be replicated in our lives. Power in our lives, the way we minister to people, actually introduces them to a God beyond reason and brings people into an encounter or experience. Sometimes it’s very subtle; sometimes it’s almost like those time-release capsules. It lingers in a person’s life, working deeper and deeper until a change or transformation is made.
I remember just a few weeks ago standing back here when someone brought a young lady to me who was an atheist. Her friends said she had a question for me. She asked me why God created evil, and I simply said, «He didn’t create evil; He created good, and evil is just a distortion of good.» It’s what the enemy tries to do to pervert the nature of what God made, and she was happy with the answer. I said, «Can I pray for you?» I did, and the Spirit of God came upon her, and she began to weep because she was encountering the power, the presence of the Lord, and that’s what we owe people. We owe people an encounter with God. Power comes in the encounter; authority comes in the commission.
Now authority has to be based on the center of all authority, which is the throne of God. The throne of God is founded on righteousness and justice. So righteousness and justice actually have to be themes for anyone who wants to learn how to walk in authority. Authority is not just to rebuke a demon here and there; it is actually to remove obstacles to what God is wanting to build. Authority lets us take righteousness and justice—justice fixes what’s broken, and righteousness builds what’s possible. You can build what’s possible if you’ve given yourself to heal what’s broken.
Luke’s gospel has a story that Jesus gave, which helps us to understand the concept of the kingdom and how this works. In Luke’s gospel, He tells us the story about a house that is clean and swept. It’s clean and swept of every evil thing that existed in the house, and once it’s clean and swept, it’s supposed to be filled with things that are good, the things that are right. But in this story, it wasn’t so; as a result, the empty place that was clean and swept becomes inhabited again. The enemy comes back seven times worse. The devil looks for empty places; that’s why Eastern meditation is not good because you empty your mind. If God inhabits my praise, there’s someone who wants to inhabit my complaints.
Words matter, and in this subject of functioning in authority, decrees, commands, etc., are the things that actually put the result of divine authority into the application in a broken place. It often comes through decree, confession, and pronouncement. So this house that is clean and swept, if society, for example, if our city or just a family here in the church has evil things happening and we help them deal with the things that are wrong, the broken problems, but we don’t build anything that we’re supposed to through discipleship, building the nature, the character, how in discipling a city, how education is supposed to work, how society and neighborhoods should be safe and all the kinds of things that make for a healthy environment—that is to be the product of discipling.
So when the house is clean and swept, it has to be filled with the right things, and that’s what authority does. Everybody in this room that has confessed Christ as your Lord and Savior has been given authority to build. I don’t mean building some big hotel somewhere; I mean actually building things in people’s lives that help them to become successful. God actually designed us to be fulfilled by our own work. Proverbs 11 gives this interesting series of statements towards the end of the chapter. It makes three, four, maybe five statements about generosity.
So if you could imagine just this paragraph, one statement after another on generosity—generosity, generosity, generosity—and then it says, «Blessed is the man who plants a crop and sells it.» It doesn’t say, «Blessed is the man who plants a crop and gives it all away.» It considers the farmer who raised the crop to be generous by the very fact that he used his gift to make something available to his community to make the community better. I’ve thanked restaurant owners in our city for contributing to the well-being and quality of life in our city by their own creativity and contribution.
So this idea that if somebody makes a profit, it’s evil—listen, if owning something is evil, why would Jesus have us give it to the poor and totally ruin their lives? That’s not the point. The point is to not be owned by something. Someday I’m going to go after this; I am, but not today.
Oh, but I want to. So the Scripture says, «Blessed is the man who plants the crop and sells it.» So God actually looks at His contribution to society as being an act of generosity. If you are a real estate agent, you’re not selling houses; you’re selling homes—something to establish family life, safe places, transform neighborhoods.
See, authority is actually given for the purpose of transformation. It’s why we bring healing to what’s broken so we can build what’s possible. It’s the justice and righteousness; it’s the combination of the two that illustrates the nature of how authority is to be expressed. When Jesus fasted for those 40 days, the devil came to him in Luke chapter 4. It says he came to him and said, «If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.» He didn’t say, «Turn the stone into bread»; he said, «Command.» Why? Because command is how you use authority.
The temptation, first of all, was for him to misuse his authority for his own personal gain. The first temptation was for him to misuse his authority for personal gain. Your authority is not for you. See, the nature of authority is to be able to speak on behalf of those who have no voice or little voice. The unborn have no voice; they have no say in the matter. To speak on their behalf is critical because they can’t. Sometimes in racial conflicts, there are people that have little to no voice; the poor often have no voice.
And I want to give an illustration here: I want to be careful; I’m not saying something is wrong; I’m just saying something is missing. If you are a billionaire, you’re going to have the attention of the leaders in whatever city you live in. Yes, I’m not even saying that would be wrong, but you would have the attention. Unfortunately, the poorest of the poor don’t have the attention. What does authority do? Authority says justice is important to me, so I’m going to speak on behalf of those who have little to no voice.
In the book of Proverbs, it says that there’s much wealth in the soil of the poor, but injustice keeps it from them. Much wealth is in the soil of the poor, but injustice. So just imagine I’m the poor person, I’m the poor family, and there’s a steel plate between me and the soil. The soil represents a place of productivity and fruitfulness, and there’s this steel plate between me and what is possible. I don’t have the ability to remove the steel plate, but I need somebody who knows how to use authority to deal with injustice.
This is, I think, an invitation of the Lord. You know this statement that Jesus made, «The poor you will have with you always,» was not a statement that says it’s okay; it’s just a statement that says, «Listen, there’s always difficulty in life, and you’re always going to be encountering people that have great needs.» It’s never to say it’s okay.
We know this from Solomon’s life. Solomon wouldn’t drink out of any cup that was silver because silver was considered without value. It literally piled up on the streets, and there was a time where it says that gold was like dust on the sidewalks of the streets of his city. The point is this: if there’s nobody poor. Solomon learned how to use his authority in the context of wisdom.
So here I want to use another dual subject to illustrate something. I’ve talked to you a number of times in the last couple of years on this one thought: the Centurion. The Centurion comes to Jesus and says, «I’m a man under authority, and because of that, when I say to those under me to do something, when I command them to do something, they do it.» His conclusion was, therefore, «Jesus, all you have to do is say the word.» What was he doing? He was acknowledging Jesus was in submission to His Father; he could recognize it.
So he says, «All you have to do is say the word, and my servant will be healed.» Jesus says, «Be it done as you have said; go your way; your servant is healed.» He makes the decree, the command. That’s authority; he makes the decree. But because Jesus recognized this man’s faith—extraordinary faith—no one in Israel had that kind of faith. He saw it because of this understanding.
Yet the emphasis that I’ve tried to make for us is to realize that faith doesn’t come from the mind; it comes from the heart. Faith is always the result of surrender, not striving, not intellectual genius or prowess. The illustration is this: the renewed mind then becomes like the banks of the river for faith to flow in; it creates the context for faith. They were in tandem—two sides of the same coin: renewed mind and the heart yielded unto faith.
Alright, that same illustration, metaphor, I’d like to use in this story is that authority is supposed to flow down the banks of a river created by wisdom. Wisdom creates the context for authority to flow effectively. It is all through Solomon’s life—well, all through the good part of his life. He took a nose dive toward the end; he stopped reading his own materials.
This is what happened, but I want you to look with me, if you would, to 1 Kings chapter 3. I read Proverbs every day, and there’s something that I’m running into over and over again, and that is how wisdom attacks injustice and establishes or builds righteousness. They are so central to the theme of Scripture; they are so central.
All I’m trying to do for today is again to underline the concept of authority: that every person in this room has authority to make a difference in the world around us, to address the issues that are broken, to use our voice on behalf of someone who has no voice, but in the context of wisdom, to be able to build something in discipling another person’s life.
In this story that we’re going to jump into the middle of, there are two harlots that live in the same house. They’re both pregnant; they both have sons three days apart. The first one has the son; three days later, the second one has a son. I don’t know how much later it was, but somewhere in the early days of their children’s births, one of them rolls over the child in the middle of the night and actually kills her child.
She goes to the other woman living in the house, puts her dead child in her crib, and takes the living child for herself. Well, obviously, the woman objects. They come before Solomon, and Solomon says in verse 23 (1 Kings 3:23), «This one says this is my son who lives, and your son is the dead one. The other one says no, your son is the dead one; mine is the living one.»
The king says, «Bring me a sword.» They brought a sword before the king. The king said, «Divide the living child in two; give half to one and half to the other.» Then the woman whose son was living spoke to the king, for she yearned with compassion for her son and said, «Oh my lord, give her the living son, and by no means kill him!» But the other one said, «Let him be neither mine nor yours, but divide him.»
So the king answered and said, «Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him; she is the mother!» All Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered, for they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to administer justice. Wisdom to administer justice.
I hesitate reading stories like this about such a great and significant figure of the Old Testament because it’s hard for many of us to compare ourselves. But the authority you have is actually greater than his. Yes, and the power that dwells in you is greater than anything he experienced, and he has deposited this grace into those who would follow him. Those who would say yes have this grace deposited so that we might actually make a difference in the world around us—bring healing to what’s broken and build what’s possible.
There’s another interesting passage—if you just turn there with me in Luke chapter 9. I’m finding that this theme is actually throughout Scripture. You know when the Lord starts showing you stuff, it seems to be on every page, and that’s kind of my experience in recent days. In verse 51, it tells us they had—verse 52, the disciples were going through Samaria. The Samaritans refused to receive them. James and John were quite upset. In verse 54, when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, «Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them just as Elijah did?»
You know, if you’re going to do something wrong, it’s best to have Scripture to back it up. So being able to say «just as Elijah did» helped to confirm this must be the Lord. Jesus turned and rebuked them and said, «You don’t know what manner of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.»
What’s the point? The enemy in this context is also now luring James and John into a position to misuse their authority for self-vindication. Jesus said, «I didn’t come to destroy; I came to build, to heal.» The whole point is the compassion that you have for the brokenness of a friend or a person’s life. The compassion is from the Lord so that you can step in and, as a servant, use authority for their benefit.
Notice the tool that they wanted to use to destroy this city was to command fire. Now, this is mind-boggling to me. I don’t know what they experienced on their ministry trips when they were sent out two by two that actually made them think they could pull this off. If Jesus just nodded His head and went, «Good idea,» if He just did that, they actually felt they could call down fire and consume an entire city, which is just bizarre.
But they must have seen some pretty crazy things happen on their trips. But they wanted to use the command to bring about the transformation from life unto death. Jesus wants the command to be used to build—from death unto life, from ashes to beauty, from broken things to whole things.
Where there is no song, bring a song! In chapter 10, following this story, verse one says, «After these things the Lord appointed 70 others also,» which to me is very funny. After the nightmare of having two disciples want to do all kinds of stupid things, in chapter 9, He thought, «This is going so well; let’s add 70 more!»
So He obviously thinks differently than I do. I’m thinking this experiment was a complete failure. I’ve got two of my most trusted ones wanting to kill an entire city and do it in my name for my glory. But Jesus was impressed at the possibility and He appointed 70 others. He said in verse 3, «Go your way; I send you as lambs among wolves. Carry neither money bag, knapsack, or sandals; greet no one on the road.»
Here’s our keys: «But whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace to this house, ' and if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest on it. If not, it will return to you.» The reality of His Lordship—I don’t understand this; I just know there’s truth in this statement.
The reality of His lordship is released through decree. So here this group of people that wanted to call down fire, there are now 70 others added, and He says when you go into a house, say, declare, release peace. It’s the same experiment that Noah did with the dove. It was a release; it came back because there was no place to land.
He says if there’s no son of peace there, the peace will come back to you. The point is peace is a person, and you and I are brokers of divine encounters. If we live in a place of yieldedness and surrender to the purposes of God, He uses these simple moments to bring people into this awareness of God’s love, God’s power, and God’s presence. But authority goes to the root cause of the cycle of loss and death and the things that are so unjust.
That statement in Proverbs about injustice keeping the poor from abundance provokes me because it feels to me like it’s an invitation to use authority in a way that helps people to get out of the cycle of poverty. Money doesn’t fix poverty, but you can’t fix poverty without it. It is also true; it’s much deeper. It’s discipling.
Discipling is teaching and training people in the process of following Christ and having Christ live in and through you. Discipling is that process of mirroring a relationship with Christ to someone else so that they can mimic and copy. It helps them to know how to handle thoughts, relationships, values, money, life, their gifting, their skills—all these things are trained in the discipling process.
It is actually building out of the red into the black something that represents Him well. It’s discipleship, and I believe everybody in this room— we’ve been hearing for years the prophecy of the billion-soul harvest, and I think, I personally think, it’s already started. I heard reports this week that there are, on average right now, 200,000 new believers every day. 200,000 new believers every single day! What’s happening around the world is just absolutely extraordinary.
I want to get in on it; I want to be a part of it. I want every church; it would not be healthy for it to all come through Bethel; that’s not healthy. It would be like a bodybuilder with a big arm, and everything else is kind of underdeveloped. I know that’s a funny picture, but I’m also extremely serious that I want every house of faith in our city to be overwhelmed with the number of people coming to Christ and that we can labor together, you know, to see people discipled and raised up to build a life that’s worth living.
Becoming productive! Authority is at the heart of it—learning how to use authority in the context of wisdom. Wisdom is the banks of the river that authority flows through, making the greatest difference in society and culture. It helps us to get the house clean and swept, but then actually fill it with proper things. That, by itself, carries a resistance toward the demonic and is immune to the enemy’s influence. Righteousness built in a person’s life creates an immunity to the demonic.
As we’ve stated, if God inhabits my praise, then there’s someone out there who wants to inhabit my complaints, looking for words to feed upon to give them legal reason to come and kill, steal, and destroy. And I don’t want to make you paranoid about your words, but I would kind of like to make you paranoid in the best possible way.
I watch people who will move in great authority, and then they will move in authority with a decree and then abort it through a personal confession—abort the baby that was just conceived. Life and death are in the power of the tongue; we know that. It’s one of the reasons I think the prophetic is so heavily emphasized in Paul’s life when he talks about the priority, the importance of the gifts and the priority of the prophetic. This is because things just need to be declared in that context.
He’s not even talking about the prophet; he’s talking about the everyday believer prophesying. Things need to be spoken, but once they’re spoken, they’ve got to be guarded so that we don’t undermine the very things we declared. John the Baptist’s dad, you know, the angel of the Lord appears to him and says, «You guys are going to have a son.» He says, «Well, how do I know this is really going to happen?»
And the angel goes, «You’re going to be silent; you obviously have the ability to mess this up.» And he couldn’t speak for nine months. Sometimes the Lord is so determined to protect His work that He just silences people with wrong influence.
Alright, say nice things—just be nice! Yeah, say nice things; say faith-filled things. Yes, the Scripture says we’re to prophesy by faith, so let’s believe God for the best and then prophesy believing for the best.
Alright, thanks. I know anytime there’s this many people in the room, there’s always a high chance that we have people here that don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus. I think God set you up and brought you here to give you an opportunity to taste of life. Being forgiven of sin and having our lives changed from the inside out is absolutely the greatest thing that could happen to anyone today. It’s greater than winning a billion dollars; there’s nothing to compare to actually being brought into the family of God, where we get to know Him and to love Him and to watch Him change us from the inside out.
It’s the great privilege in life, and Jesus is offering that to everyone here. Scripture says, «What does it profit a man to gain the entire world but lose his own soul?» There is no profit in losing our own soul, and such an extravagant gift is literally offered today as a gift. If there’s anyone here that would say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave the building; I don’t want to leave the property until I know what it is to be forgiven, until I know what it is to be brought into the family of God,» then I want you to just put a hand up right where you are—just say, «That’s me,» and we’re going to pray for you. We’re going to celebrate.
We have a whole bunch of folks online as well. Put in the chat room that that’s your desire, and we have Pastor P online to be able to help you, but do that as well. Anyone in the room, just say, «Bill, I don’t want to leave until I know what it is to be born again; I know what it is to be forgiven.» Put your hand up quickly.
Okay, alright, I’m going to assume you’re all in. Let’s everyone stand if you would. If you could hold your place; it really does help us. Plus, I’ve got to get to the back door. But Gabri, who’s coming? Dante, come on up. Let me pray for you first. I want to pray just a simple prayer concerning authority, so just put a hand out in front of me as a prophetic act of receiving.
Father, I do ask right now in the wonderful, wonderful name of Jesus that what we see through a glass darkly—just shapes and shadows—would become clearer and clearer as we give ourselves to bring healing to a city, to an individual, to a nation. Help us to walk in authority undefiled, entirely for Your glory. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen. Amen.