Return of the King
Transcript
And so if we're going to say that Jesus is a good king, we're going to spend a little bit of time looking at his kingdom. Now, I know that as soon as we say, all right, we're going to turn to the book of Revelation, there's a little bit of like, okay, this is about to get weird. Like there's just, I don't think we always appropriately view the book of Revelation. And here's how I know this. When you talk to Christians, there's kind of a, people lean one way or the other. So it's like people, you talk to Christians, they're like, yeah, I've read the entire New Testament, except for the book of Revelation.
Like it just kind of a tagged add on thing. It's like, I've read all of it, but not that one. Or you'll talk to people and they've been like, yeah, I read the New Testament and I've read the book of Revelation 47 times. And I've got a chart in my house and I know when he's coming back and I've got a really cool picture of a dragon. Like, it's like, okay, all right. So there's just a little bit of what are we doing when we're reading the book of Revelation?
And so I just wanted to give us a little bit of an understanding of the book of Revelation so that we can actually read it, understand the text, and not be thinking random thoughts the whole time. So Revelation was written by the Apostle John. He's the same apostle who wrote the book of John. He wrote 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, and he wrote the book of Revelation. He was exiled on the island of Patmos. And it says he was, this is all at the beginning of the book, but he says he was praying.
It was the Lord's day and Jesus shows up and basically takes him and has an angel at different points take him and shows him things that are going to happen. He speaks at first to some churches that are currently in existence and then shows him some things that are going to happen. And so he writes, it's a book of prophecy, much like when Isaiah wrote a good bit of Isaiah, there was prophecy when Jeremiah wrote, Jeremiah was prophecy, and it was about things that were going on then and things that were going to happen. And so most of that has been fulfilled, all the Old Testament prophets where they prophesied things about countries or things that were going to take place when Jesus came.
Book of Revelation, most of this is not completed yet, hasn't happened yet. So we're still kind of in the, this is prophecy for stuff that's going to come. Now, here's where, what happens with the book of Revelation. John has shown things that I think sometimes are just, he's actually seeing what's going on. So he gets to see a glimpse into the future and he writes it down as best he can.
This is going to happen. There are other times where I think he's shown images that represent things that are going to happen. So kind of like in the book of Daniel, people have dreams and Daniel interprets them and there's like a giant statue with clay feet and he tells them, oh, the clay feet means this. So there's some of that that happens in the book of Revelation. And John, a good bit of seeing things and he just writes as best he can what it is. So there's one point where he says it sounded like, his voice sounded like the rushing of many waters.
So he's just as best he can. He's like, I heard a voice and it was kind of like if a waterfall could talk. That's what he would sound like. So it's just, he's, he's writing as best he can what, what's going on. And so what we're seeing in the chapter we're looking at in chapter 21 is I believe John is seeing a real thing and writing it down as best he can. So it's not imagery of something that's going to happen.
It's actually a picture of it taking place and he's writing down for us what's going to happen. And so we get, we get off in the book of Revelation. We focus too much on the images and they'll, we'll, you'll, you'll, you think that the book of Revelation is about like a dragon and a beast and the number 666 and the Antichrist. Fair? Like you heard all this out of the book of Revelation? Okay.
Just so you know, just for your own brains, this is free. Antichrist isn't even mentioned in the book of Revelation. I know, right? He's mentioned in John and never shows up in the book of Revelation. So the book of Revelation is about Jesus.
So I'm going to read you, we're going to start in 21 in a second, but I'm going to read you some of the stuff from the first chapter just to help us know what we're looking at. Revelation 1.1 starts this way. The Revelation of Jesus Christ. The book of Revelation is the revealing of Jesus. It's when he comes back. 5 through 7 says this.
Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom. Priest to his God and Father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him.
And all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. Amen. So that's how the book of Revelation begins.
And what it's saying is that this book is about what it's like when the king returns and sets up his kingdom. And so that's what we're looking at in the very last pages of the Bible. We're looking at what that kingdom looks like when Jesus shows back up, sets up his kingdom, and begins his rule and his reign on earth. And so we're going to take a little time. We're going to study that this morning. And so I'm going to pray and then we'll hop in.
God, I pray that you would help us to correctly see what your kingdom looks like. The fact that you are a good king and that you have invited us into your kingdom here on earth. And that one day you will return. Everyone will see you and you will set up your kingdom because you are the ruler of the kings of the earth. And so, God, we pray that we would, through your Holy Spirit, get a glimpse into that this morning. We love you.
We praise you. We thank you. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right.
Revelation 21 says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people. Okay.
A couple of things. The Bible uses heaven in three ways. It refers to heaven as the place where birds fly. So that's like in the heavens. It refers to heaven as the place where stars are. That's in the heavens.
And then it refers to heaven as the place where God exists and where you go when you die. Those who are God's people go when you die. And so we're going to be looking at heaven, and we're going to be looking at eternity. And so since we're going to be talking about eternity today, this will be point one of 47 for those of you who are taking notes. I want to talk for a really long time to help you feel the weight of eternity. I'm just kidding.
So anyway, but we're going to be talking about eternity. And here's the thing. We will not spend, you will not spend eternity in heaven. You may be thinking, speak for yourself, sinner boy. I'm going to heaven. No one spends eternity in heaven.
What it just said was that the new Jerusalem comes out of the clouds, comes out of heaven to the new earth. And so it says that he saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Now what we don't know, because there's other passages in Scripture that talk about this, if the earth we're on now is just completely gone or if it's renewed, if it's restored. We don't really know, and the text doesn't really clearly say, but we know that we have a new earth or a renewed earth and that heaven comes out of the clouds to meet it. And so it says this, And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, that's verse 3, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.
He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. On the new earth, in Jesus's kingdom, there is no death. There is no pain. There is no mourning.
Prior to this in the book of Revelation, it talks about when Jesus shows up. And when Jesus shows up, what happens is he conquers his enemies. Chief among those are Satan, sin and death. The Bible says that Jesus takes Hades and throws it into a lake of fire. And that he takes death and throws him in the lake of fire. Jesus kills death.
Now, I don't make the rules. But if you can kill death, you're in charge. That's just how that works. Like, they didn't ask me. I just know that's how that works. The guy who is scarier than death is scarier.
That's just how that. So, there is no death in the new earth. There's no pain. There's no mourning. Now, think about how beautiful that is. You don't lock your doors on the new earth.
For those who place faith in Jesus and who are rescued and brought into eternity, you don't lock your doors. You always tell the truth because, first of all, you have nothing to hide. And no one is going to use anything against you. There's no one who's going to maliciously seek to use any information you have to hurt you or to posture themselves up or to take advantage of you. Like, our government has a secret service, has CIA, FBI, because we have things to hide. And we don't want our enemies to know stuff about what we're doing and how things work.
Like, every time, like, you watch a movie and there's, like, a great invention and they're always like, this is beautiful. But if it fell into the wrong hands, it could be used for great destruction. Like, every movie ever where they invent something good. And that's just the way that works. Like, we invent the internet, we invent computers, and then people take the time, spend intelligence and effort to come up with viruses for computers. I don't know why.
You think they could do the same thing to make it productive? Anytime we come up with some sort of technology, it's used for pain, for hurt, for destruction. That doesn't happen on the new earth. There's no crying. There's no pain. There's no mourning.
There's no death. You don't go to funerals on the new earth. Every tear is wiped away. There's no cancer. There's no bad news. There's no fear about what's going to happen in the future.
Perfect peace and perfect rest because of it in God's kingdom, in Jesus' kingdom, where sin has been conquered fully by Jesus on the cross. There's nothing to worry about. Nothing bad can happen. Now, here's the thing. Now, here's what we know about that. First of all, that's beautiful.
We all want that. We all have that imprinted in us. We've said this before, and I've checked the statistics again. Ten out of ten people still die. You can Google that. Science.
And here's the thing. Here's what's true about that. Every time someone dies, there's something inside of us that screams, this isn't how this is supposed to be. This isn't how this is supposed to work. There's something in us that knows that this is wrong, and we don't know why. We don't really have, because it's, it happens to everyone, and so you'd think that humans would be used to it.
You'd be like, oh yeah, of course. That's where we're all headed. And, see, you'd work on Monday. Like, that's not, like, that's not how that works. There's something in us that just knows that this is fractured, this is broken, this falls short. So we know, when we read this, that there's no pain, there's no suffering, there's no cancer, there's no disease.
We were talking in my community group on, this past week, Bone and Kelly were in our group, and Kelly was talking about her son. She's got two sons. One's older, one's younger. They were at a clinic, like a, like a doc in a box, you know, and the older son dared the younger one. He was, they were sitting there, like, in the waiting room, and he dared the younger one. He said, I bet you won't lick this chair.
And so the younger son, being wicked smart, like, was like, oh, yeah, I will. So he licked the chair, won the bet, and then the next week they had to come back because he had two earaches, a stomach virus, and bronchitis, and was sick, like, deathly sick for two weeks, which is just the greatest story I've ever heard. I was trying to cook when they told me that. I got to laughing so hard, though I had to step away so I wouldn't catch myself on fire. Here's what we just read. That doesn't happen in heaven.
In heaven, her son can lick any chair he wants. So we read that, and we know that's beautiful, and then here's what happens to us. We immediately go, I don't know how that works. Like, immediately, our brains can't even fathom, comprehend what it looks like where there's no pain and mourning and suffering and fear. Like, even for us, I got into a discussion this week, even for us, pain is good. Like, fire can burn me, so my hand getting hot and me pulling it away is a good thing for me because if I didn't feel pain, I might have just set myself on fire.
Fear is good because bears can kill me, and so if I see a bear, I'm not just like, that guy looks huggable. Like, I have an appropriate amount of fear. Now, in heaven, so where there is no pain and no fear and no destruction and no death, we immediately just don't even have a way to process that. We just don't have a category for, okay, what does that mean? So you immediately get in things like, so does that mean that you won't hit me with a hammer or that if you do, it'll tickle?
Like, how does that work? Like, does it just mean that we won't do bad things because then it would be like, I guess we don't have freedom. We're like robots in heaven. Or does it mean that there is ways to get hurt, but you don't get hurt? You just like bounce back and laugh about it. But immediately, we have no framework for what this is going to look like.
And so here's what happens to us. It does two things to us. One is it makes us, when we think about eternity, it makes us not think about it too much because we just don't have categories for it. And it also kind of pushes back on us so that when we think about spending eternity, for those of us who are believers, and we think about heaven, and we think about spending eternity with God, we just kind of make it faker, ghostier, more vapory. Like, I might have feet, but I don't know why because I'll be floating everywhere. There's just something in our brains that can't handle this.
And so I just want to point this out to us. As we read through this text, it says this, then I saw a new heaven. Okay, so we know about heaven. And that's, and a new earth. So it's a new earth that's being created.
What I said, we don't spend eternity in heaven. We spend eternity on the new earth. Verse two, And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them as their God.
It doesn't say that the dwelling place of man is with God. And we know that he's more important, but I think it's intentionally worded that way. I think what we're being told very clearly is that God makes a new earth, and he joins us here. So when we think about heaven, we think about like, glittery, vapory, like I would hug you, but we would just like, go through each other, and it'd be weird. Like, we just don't have a category for it, but what it's saying is that it's a new earth. So actually, what we already have in creation is a picture, a fractured, broken, messed up picture, of what his original design was.
When God created the garden, when he created earth in the first place, it was good, and he said it was good. Sin, death, destruction messed it up. The goal isn't him then looking down and going, okay, the best we can do at this point is just suck your souls up, and y'all can float around with me up here. No, he renews it, recreates it, and starts it back off the way it's supposed to be, so that we get to spend eternity in a real place. Real as in it exists, and real as in it's a tangible thing. Now, it's different, because there's no pain and no fear and all that.
It's different, but we'll have real bodies. Corinthians 15 says that like a seed is to a plant is what our bodies now will be to our new bodies. So like your body now is a seed, and your glorified eternal body is like the plant that comes from that seed. I have no clue what that means, but it sounds really cool. He talks about the fact that plants, like seeds are kind of similar, but plants look really different. So we'll have some form of body though, some form of tangibleness to us.
Philippians 3, and we'll read more of this section later, but it says, our lowly bodies will be like his glorious body. So Jesus, after he died, had a body. Like people touched him, he ate food, like he ate fish, it didn't just fall through and land on the chair awkwardly underneath him. Like he had feet, he walked places. He also like went into a room where all the doors were locked. So he can do something that we can't.
Like I don't know how that works, but I don't think he was outside jimmying it. Like pulled out his ID and slid it through and busted in. Like I don't think that's what happened. But we have a real body. Here's what this means though. We think sometimes that earth, like that spiritualness makes things better.
So to think about heaven in an earthy way, like that dirt is good, somehow makes it less than. And that we need to spiritualize. And it's like, no, we're just, we float and it's pretty and there's harps and we're in this weird thing where everyone's a baby and wears a diaper and has a harp. And we have this picture in our minds. Like if you talk to a Christian, this is what you'd say. Do you believe in heaven?
Most Christians, because it's Christian doctrine, would say yes. Like yes, believe in heaven. That's a real thing. Or you believe you'll spend eternity with God. Yes. Will you like heaven?
Yes. Heaven's going to be great. Why? I don't know. Bible says it'll be good. Like we just have a little bit of a picture in our brain.
Like I just always think, yeah, heaven's going to be great. I have no clue why. Like I feel a little bit like it's like how you enjoy coming out of surgery. It's like a dopamine wee kind of thing. It's like, I would not usually think this was great, but woohoo. Like that's the way I picture heaven.
Is it like God's just going to hardwire our brains to like floating and that'll be the best. What have you been doing? Sitting. For how long? I don't know. Heaven's great.
Like, and you just, but there's nothing in me now that thinks that that would be great. I just know that the Bible says it'll be great. But when I think about the fact that it's going to be a new earth, you ever look at pictures of earth and you're like, you have this moment where you're like, this is so beautiful. This is breathtaking and captivating. And then you have this moment where it's like, I will never see this in real life. This may just be photoshopped.
I don't even know if this is real because there's like, I won't ever be able to go investigate all these beautiful places that I see. And what we get in eternity is not a floaty spiritual realm, but a new glorified body that's like Jesus's. And we actually have an earth to re, where he redesigns everything the way it was originally supposed to be. So is there pain? No. Is there mourning?
No. Is there sadness? No. Is there death? No. Cancer?
No. Rape? No. Do people take advantage of children? No. No.
How does that all play out? I don't know. Is it real? Yes. Can you touch it, feel it, smell it? Do you actually use your feet for walking?
Yes. Your glorified plant feet, I don't know how many you'll have. It'll be like Jesus's, so he had to. He looked normal-ish. So, so we don't, we don't get this, but here, let me, I want to, I want to keep reading. I want to show you something.
Verse five. And he who is seated on the throne, so kings sit on thrones, behold, I am making all things new. Also, he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, it is done. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty, I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. Okay. Spring of the water of life without payment is a picture of the gospel. It's the fact that we get life, fullness, completeness, joy, and eternity without payment. We didn't rescue ourselves. We didn't redeem ourselves.
We didn't moral ourselves into it. We didn't follow the rules really well. We were rescued, redeemed, and brought in because Jesus followed the rules. The law had to be upheld, and it was upheld by Jesus, not by us. And we're given life without payment. And then it says, to the one who conquers will have this heritage.
The one who conquers means this, those who remain faithful and continue to follow Jesus. Saying that you're a Jesus follower is great. Here's what happens a lot in the Bible. There's two sides to things. So there's the side that we see, and there's the side that Jesus accomplishes.
So the Bible says that Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith, which means that he started it and he finished it. He didn't just save you and say, all right, you got a clean slate. Now figure it out, and I'll see you at the end if you can keep it together. No, he finishes it as well. But on our side, there's faithfulness.
There's us continuing to pursue him, us continuing in the faith, us staying and sticking and following. That's what happens. A real Christian stays a real Christian, continues to grow, continues to follow, continues to fight. And so he says to those who conquer, those who stay in, I will be their God and he will be my son. Here's the thing. Christianity says very clearly, Jesus is the only way to heaven, the only way to eternity, the only way to the father.
Those who are on the new earth got there by way of Jesus. No other way. And so people will say, that's really small minded. It's really limited. You're being really exclusive. If we had control over it, then we could control the inclusiveness or the exclusiveness.
But this is a reality. Jesus is real. He is a real king. And he doesn't cease to be a king based upon our whims. It's one of the things we said early on. There are no runoffs or recounts for kings.
So he's a real king. And here's the other thing. This eternity is with him dwelling with us, where he's our father. It says that we would be sons. If you don't love Jesus, that's terrible. If you love Jesus, that's beautiful.
The next chapter goes and it says that there is no temple. There is no son. That all of that is fulfilled and completed by Jesus and by God, by the lamb. Heaven is about Jesus. It's about the king. The kingdom, the consummated kingdom is about the king, where we spend eternity with the king.
It's not about you and what you like. It's about Jesus. Who he is, what he's accomplished, what he's done for us. We're invited into the relationship that he has with the father, with the Holy spirit. We're invited into being on earth where we dwell with him in the relationship. We were meant to have with him.
You know, sometimes you feel like, I just don't feel like I've been walking with God. Well, I don't feel like I've been following. Well, I don't think I've been hurt here. It doesn't happen in heaven. It doesn't happen in eternity. That we relate to him perfectly because it's about him.
The next chapter says that his name will be on our foreheads. So in the old Testament, he told them to put the law, to bind the law on their foreheads. Here it says that his name will be on us. If you don't love Jesus, that's not something you would enjoy being marked by him forever. And if you love Jesus, absolutely. It reminds me of toy story where, uh, what he gets lost and every once in a while, like he'll roll up his big cloth foot and look at his shoe where it says Andy, where Andy wrote his name on him.
There's just a little bit of that in heaven where we're just forever marked by Jesus. That we belong to the King, not as a subject, but as a son. That's exciting. Now, here's the thing. We, we go through this. We, we see what it looks like for Jesus to be the King, for everything to be in, in heaven is enjoyable because it comes from Jesus.
That we enjoy what we enjoy in heaven because it, it, he's the fountain of joy. The floodwaters of, of everything that is enjoyable in heaven. And here's, when we read about this, when we think about heaven, there's a little bit of like, why does it matter? Why does it matter that we're going to spend eternity on a new earth? Why, why does it matter that this is what Jesus's kingdom looks like? What's, what's the point in us today reading about that?
Is it just for us to hear it and go, ah, it sounds neat. And if I ever get asked the question, will I spend eternity in heaven? I'll say, nope, new earth. Trick question. I win. Like, like, are we just learning it to be able to regurgitate facts?
Like, why does this, why does this matter? Um, Philippians three, and it'll be up on the screen. 20 through 21 says this, but our citizenship is in heaven. And from it, we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. That's what we read earlier by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. The reason it's helpful for us to learn about our King and to learn about his kingdom is that that's where our citizenship is.
Philippians three says that our citizenship is in heaven is, is currently where Jesus is sitting on a throne, ruling and reigning where God is. What that means for us is that we behave like citizens of eternity. We function like we'll function when we get to the new earth where there is no pain, there is no lying, there is no deceit, there is no mourning. We get to know that heaven is a reality, that eternity is real for us, that the new earth is a place that we will spend eternity. It makes a difference. My uncle is, one of my uncles is from Nigeria.
He's a Yoruba people group. And when he came to the U.S., he was adopted by my grandparents. When he came to the U.S., he's a citizen of Nigeria. Like he thinks culturally like a Nigerian, does life like a Nigerian, sees life like a Nigerian. So like they were in West Virginia, he had never seen snow.
And so he, my granddad was having a hard time getting a trash can down his really steep driveway because it was iced up. And so my uncle sees him and is like, absolutely, this isn't okay. Like I've got to go help him. He shouldn't have to do this on his own. Take the trash out. I should be taking the trash out.
And so he just sprints down the stairs, sprints out the front door, meets ice, and goes all the way down the driveway, like out into the road. And my granddad was like, you got to learn what ice is. Like you can't, this is why this is taking me forever. But he's Nigerian. He told one time, he went back to Nigeria, met his wife, was bringing her back to the U.S. and he was trying to coach her up on like, Nigeria is different from the United States. One of the things he said was, and I'm going to do my Uncle Abel impersonation.
He, which by the way, whenever I talk about Cain and Abel, I don't say Abel, I say Abel. And that's a shout out to my uncle every time I do it, because he says, ah, if it was Abel, it would be L-E. It is E-L, that is Abel, which is what his name is. So I'm like, all right, you're right, Abel. Cain and Abel, got it. But he, I told him, I was telling the story to somebody, and I told him later, I talked to him, I said, I did my best Uncle Abel impersonation.
And he said, ah, you mean I do not talk like you? And then he went, I've been speaking English way longer than you have. You don't even speak it correctly, you speak American. You don't even know English. But he said, he told my aunt, BK, he told her, he said, if an American invites you out to eat, that does not mean they are paying for you.
You better have money. Because in Nigeria, if I say, hey, you want to go grab some food, that means I have invited you, I am paying for you. So he was somewhere, and there was a bunch of college students, they were like, yeah, I want to go eat over here. And he was like, yes, I do. Because he thought, free fruit, sweet. And they got there, and he goes, we get there, and everyone paid for themselves.
So I was like, oh. He said, luckily he had some money, he was able to pay for himself, but he told my aunt, I always have money, because Americans, you just never know. Like, sometimes they'll pay for you, sometimes they don't. There's no rule on that at all. But he was a citizen of Nigeria, and so he viewed the world like a Nigerian.
And the truth is, we're citizens of heaven, we're citizens of this eternity. We get to view the world like that. And that's why it's very helpful, and encouraging for Christians, to press eternity into our minds, to consider it, to weigh it. Paul in Romans 8 says, that he considers the suffering, of this present time, not worthy, to be compared, with the glory that is to be revealed to us. He said, he considers it like, he sat down and waited out. Thought about it.
It's helpful for us as Christians, to press eternity into our brains, and it's hard for us to fathom, but it's good for us. Because it frees us up, and it does a few things for us. This is why it's important for us, to not have just this vague, cloudy, heaven's gonna be good one day thing, but now have a grounded understanding, that that is the reality, of where those who've placed their faith in Jesus, will spend eternity. And, the other side of that, is those who haven't placed their faith in Jesus, haven't had their sin paid for by him, spend eternity in hell. Which is just as real, and eternity there is just as long.
And it's important for us as believers, as those who've been rescued and redeemed by Jesus, to have firmly fit into our brains, that eternity, with our king in his kingdom, is coming. Because it does a few things for us. It does a lot for us, but we're gonna talk about a few. One, we get to enjoy life more now, because eternity is real. There's just something about us, that thinks that enjoying life, to the fullest here, is somehow, earthy and wrong, because we're Christians, we should be spiritual. Because that's what we'll be like in heaven.
Spiritual. Someone will be like, do you want a biscuit? And I'll be like, no, this is heaven, I'm spiritual. No, it's heaven. Carbs don't count in heaven. They don't make you take a nap, you can take one if you'd like.
So, there's something about, the fact that eternity is real, and it's on a new earth, that means that as we enjoy things here, we were designed to enjoy things here, we get to enjoy more. We get to know that it's just a foretaste. That all of the beauty, and all of the fun, and all of the laughter, and all of the food, and excitement, and art, and nature, everything that we enjoy, everything that flares up in us, as we enjoy it on earth, is just a glimpse. Just a small window, into what the new earth will be like. Which means that we get to enjoy biscuits, we get to eat bacon, we get to go on a hike through the woods, and let that worshipfully roll up in us, in praise for our creator, and our savior, and our king, who invites us into something much better, for a much longer time.
It means we get to enjoy earth more now, we get to enjoy life more now, because we have a real eternity that is to come, and holiness for us, isn't a complete stepping away, from all things that are enjoyable. Now there's a time, when we fast from food, when we fast from some of the things, that we enjoy on earth, to remind ourselves, that this isn't all that there is. To help our souls hunger for what's true, and real, and eternal. There's also times, where we get to sit at a table, with family, with church family, and just enjoy, the fact that this is just a small window, into what it's going to get to be like.
Revelation says, that it's going to be the wedding supper of the lamb, that we're invited into a feast. That's what we're called into, when he returns, is a feast. There's something in us, that says that spending a lot of time, sitting around a table, and enjoying it with family, there's actually something, really spiritual about that. Really beautiful about that picture, of us enjoying food together, as family, because that's how we'll inaugurate, and start off the kingdom, when Jesus returns. That's what we'll be invited into. So we get to enjoy life more now, if we press eternity, the fact that we will spend, life on a new earth, into our brains.
Second thing that this does for us, is that we do not have to enjoy life now. We don't have to. There's an aching fear, in us, that I think continually grows. Am I enjoying life? Am I having fun? Am I having as much joy, and fulfillment as I could have?
Am I making the best use, of all my time? Am I, there's just something in us, that says, yeah heaven's going to be great, but if I'm going to enjoy a good meal, it's got to happen now. Heaven's going to be great, but if I'm going to, have a good adrenaline rush, it's going to happen now. If I'm going to travel, and see beautiful things, it's going to happen now. Heaven will be nice, I'm sure, but I've really got to do a lot now, because I've only gotten, a short amount of time, to really squeeze in, all the good stuff. There's something, that says that in us, and it's completely wrong.
Understanding that, eternity on the new earth, awaits us, frees us up, to not have a spectacular life now, to not be forced, to squeeze all the juices, out of it. And what that means is, you get to work a nine to five Job, love your family really well, spend your days in Casey, West Columbia, and that be perfectly beautiful, and good, in the eyes of God. Means you don't have to go see Europe, go if you get the chance. Europe's pretty lame anyway, that's why we made America. But, there's just something in us, that constantly feels like, we're missing out, and the truth is, we have an eternity, of better things to come.
And so we're freed up. It also means, that you're freed up, to not be a success, to give a lot away, to give a lot of your time, to those who are poor, oppressed, those who are sick. It means you're freed up, to go to another country, and nurse those, who have Ebola, back to health. And you're freed up, to get Ebola, and die. Because you've got an eternity, to come, of good things. there's just something, there's just something, about knowing that, and pressing that, into our hearts, that frees us up, to follow Jesus, in a way that we can't, if we forget, that that's what's to come. If we forget, that that's the culmination, of what he's doing.
The reason that he calls us, into really hard stuff. It's because he's already, accomplished everything, on our behalf, and he's got much better things, awaiting us. That's why Jesus, over and over and over again, is going to press into, the topic of money, and pair it with, the topic of heaven. He's going to say, don't care so much, about earthly riches, and earthly treasures, and earthly things, that you fail, to realize what's coming. The third thing, this does for us, is that we, see, we more clearly see, what is important. When this image, gets pressed into our minds, that an eternity, is to come.
A real one. Where there are, adrenaline rushes, where there is reality, where you do, inhale and exhale. Where things are tangible. Where it says, that we'll eat, and drink rich food, and the best wine. When we press that, into our souls, it helps us clearly see, what actually matters here. Here's the truth.
Every person in this room, when God designed creation, designed you to exist, for an eternity. And every person in this room, even though sin, has marred his original design, will spend eternity somewhere. And every person that you know, will spend eternity somewhere. And Jesus shows up, the king returns, and he claims his people, and he takes them home. And those who he hasn't rescued, and those who haven't placed, their faith in him, spend eternity, paying for their sin, and their rebellion against him. That's true.
And when eternity, is pressed into our hearts, it helps us see, what actually matters. When we weigh eternity, against what's going on, then it really matters, that 80% of the people, in this city, don't know, or follow Jesus. Then it really matters. It really matters, that that's true, for this city, so probably true, for where you work, and probably true, for the neighborhood you live in. And that matters. We clearly see, what's important.
When eternity, the reality of it, is considered, and weighed, and pressed into our hearts. Here's something, I've thought about some. It says that, for those who conquer, he says, I will be their God, and he will be my son. And I've got two brothers, and, I always think about, what life would be like, if there had only been, two of us. So instead of three sons, there had been two of us.
And I think about the fact that, when you have more people, it multiplies the joy. So I've got two brothers, Logan and Vince, and both of them are slap crazy. And I get to see, Logan react to a Vince joke, or Vince's nonsense. I get to call Logan, and talk about Vince's nonsense. I get to talk to Vince, about Logan's nonsense. They don't talk about me, because I'm awesome.
I get to call Logan, and talk about Vince's nonsense. I get to talk to Vince, about Logan's nonsense. They don't talk about me, because I'm awesome. Our lives are multiplied, by the fact that, there's three of us. I sometimes think about, what life would have been like, if there was four of us. That, that, I get to, Logan gets to see me react, to, to a Vince. There's just, there's something that multiplies, and if Vince wasn't there, I wouldn't get to see, how Logan would react to a Vince. I wouldn't get to see,
How Vince would, there's something about, more of us, that multiplies that. The only reason, it doesn't make sense on earth, outside of God, calling you to a life of celibacy, but for those who have family, those who are married, I was thinking about this, the only reason, like for my wife and I, she's pregnant, we're going to be having a son, and I'm very excited about, the fact that, that he's going to grow up, and have a personality, and I'm going to get to see, I'm going to learn more about Anna, as I get to see her react, and lead a son, and she's going to learn more about me,
And we're going to get to see, and grow more, and love for each other, as we grow in love for, for this kid, who's going to be, terrible and awesome, but the only reason, it doesn't make sense for us, to just have child, after child, after child, after child, after child, after child, is eventually, we're limited by time, and by finances, resources, so like, if we had tons, and tons of children, we probably wouldn't be able, to feed them all,
Run out of things, to name them, just start numbering them, 12, get over here, that's why, if you're going to have, a bunch of kids, don't do the thing, where you have to start them, all with the same letter, because that just seems like, it'd make it more difficult, for you, you just run out, and eventually, one would be like, Josephina, and Jose, and Joseph, and Josanna, and Gary, because I ran out of J's, but,
Here's the thing, those limitations, time limitations, and resource limitations, do not exist, in eternity, and so when God says, that I'll be their God, and they'll be my son, every time, that's true for a person, there's a multiplication, of joy, that we all get to be, in the same family, and we all get to grow, and see each other, and build with each other, and have connection, and life, and joy with each other, for eternity, that's why, that's why the Bible says,
That when a sinner repents, when someone realizes, that they're sinful, and hands that over to Jesus, and Jesus saves them, that the angels rejoice, every time, that hasn't gotten old, in heaven, because they understand, the weight of it, they feel, the eternity, that hangs in the balance, and they know, the multiplication of joy, when there's a new birth, that there's just something, about every time, a seat is added, to the table, of the feast, that there's joy, and that's why it matters,
And that's why, it's good to follow, this king, who invites us, into his kingdom, and that's why it matters, that people in the city, don't know Jesus, and that's why it matters, that our community groups, are on mission, where we seek, to go out of our way, to build relationships, with people, because every time, someone repents of sin, there's a seat, added to that table, and there's a family member, added to that table, and there's an eternity, of a multiplication, of joy,
That we don't even understand, but the angels do, and they celebrate, and we get invited, into that, because Jesus, paid for our mess, and our sin, and rescues us, and not into some, specter fest, where we float around, but a real eternity, where there's tangibleness, and he's our God, and we're his people, and we're his sons, and that's why, it's important for us, to press eternity, into our minds, to remind ourselves, of where our true family is, where our true hope lies,
What really matters, so that we don't waste our days, on things that are going to pass away, and fail to understand, the weight, of what is to come, Matt and Bianca are going to come back up, we're going to sing, and we're going to praise Jesus, and we're going to take communion, we've got it set up on this table, right over here, and communion for us, as believers, is a reminder, that the gospel is true, it's a reminder, of what Jesus accomplished, for us on the cross, that he had a real body, and shed real blood, that the God of the universe, took on human form, and for us today,
It gets to be a reminder, of not only what he's done for us, but what is to come for us, the fact that a new earth, where there's real flavor, real tangibleness, reality, with him forever, that as we as believers, partake in what he did for us, on the cross, that we as believers, will get to partake, in what he does for us, in eternity, it's the meal that reminds us, of the feast that is to come, he says he, in the last supper, with his disciples, he says, I won't taste of the vine again, until I eat it new, with you in the kingdom,
He's held that promise, he doesn't pick up the cup again, until we show up, and so we today, get to take communion, as believers, reminding ourselves, of what is to come, of the feast that will be for us, and an eternity, that will be for us, so that we get to be for him here, Father we thank you, we thank you for all, that you've done for us, for the reality of the cross, and the reality of the eternity, that we're invited into, by your grace, that as we place faith in you, you rescue us, you redeem us, you seal us, and that one day,
All those who have genuinely, repented of their sin, to have you rescue, and redeem them, will spend eternity with you, where it's about you, where our hearts are set on you, God help us, through your Holy Spirit, to press eternity, into our minds, and into our souls, lest we forget, we praise you, we thank you, in Jesus name, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen,
Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen,
An Unlikely Throne
Transcript
Good morning. We are going to be in Matthew chapter 27 today. We put extra Bibles out on the rows so that everybody could have one. So if you didn't bring one, we've got some on the rows for you to look at because we're going to be looking at a good bit of the text. We're going to be spending a good bit of time in Matthew chapter 27. So we are in our fifth week of our Kingdom Come series where we're looking at Jesus as king, where we're understanding that that Jesus is a king.
And here's the problem that we have with that. We don't like kings. Historically, as Americans, we haven't done so well with with kings. We don't have a very good track record with kings. So we might like kings in theory or we watch movies and it's interesting that there's kings.
But the truth is we don't like that idea. We don't like the concept of someone having that much power and authority, that a king can just do what they want so that when they speak things, they can speak things into law. There's nobody that like checks behind whether or not that makes any sense or is a good law. They just get to say, so we're doing right. It down. Boom.
Done. I just kinged it up like they get to do that. And we don't like that. We don't appreciate that to the point that anytime someone seems like they get too much power, we're just automatically suspicious of it. Like the mayor of West Columbia just kind of got into it with city council. So city council like stripped him of some of his powers.
So then he did something where we had to do like a runoff vote to give him more power that he wrote up. So the mayor was going to have not only the power that they took from him, but extra power. And West Columbia was like, no, you don't get more power. Quit fighting with city council about stuff like that was pretty much what happened. And so because we don't even want a mayor to have a lot of power. Like we would much rather diffuse power amongst a group of people because we think that's safer.
And the truth is that it is a safe way to operate when you have sinful people in charge of things. Anytime we've seen someone get ultimate power or a lot of authority, it tends to go poorly. And so we're automatically just kind of wary of this. But let me tell you what's true. We love democracy and we love a republic. We love the idea of being able to vote.
And but the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. Period. The best form of government is a wise and good king. Because then we don't have to have a bunch of elections and we don't have to worry about like if the king could actually be good. And the problem is we immediately go, yeah, but that's not going to happen. True.
But just go with me here. If the king could actually be good, if they were actually wise and benevolent and they were altruistic and they were just loving and made good decisions for the people, that's actually the best way to go. If they actually make things, it's not decisions that aren't just in their best interest, but in the interest of the people. I was talking to my cousin one time and I asked him what he thought was the best form of government. That's what he said. And I thought it was really weird.
But he said, yeah, benevolent dictatorship. That's what I'd be for. And it was like, I don't think that's a good idea. But I've thought about it more and I do think that's a good idea. The problem is you just wouldn't know if it was going to be benevolent. So dictators don't usually handle that well.
But that is the best way to have a government. So what we've looked at is that Jesus is a king. He is the king. The Old Testament prophesied eternal king. And so what we asked early on was, is he a good king? Like if he's a king and if his kingship is eternal so that it extends to us, is he a good king?
And more than that, like, because that's not really even the question. The question is, is he a better king than we are? Because our option when a king shows up, there aren't like dual kingships. When a king shows up, you're either under or over. Like you either submit or you fight. And so the question becomes, is he a good king?
Do we submit to him? Do we follow him in his kingdom? And so I just, thinking along those lines, wanted to talk about what makes a good king. And I've got some thoughts before we get into the text of what makes a good king. A king, a good king, takes on the plight of his people. So a good king knows what's going on.
He doesn't separate himself from his people. Like recently, I've seen a bunch of stuff about Kim Jong-un, who's been sick and I hadn't seen him for a while. And people are making jokes because he's got the best care that North Korea offers. And he's sick. And they're like, I don't know what's going on with the rest of the people in North Korea. But this isn't a good sign for them because he's separated himself so much from his people that he, what they go through isn't what he goes through.
But a good king is a part of his people and is among his people. There's a story, an old kind of story in China where they came to the king and they said, the people are starving because we're running out of rice. And the story goes that the king responded, well, let them eat meat. And I can just imagine the people being like, you don't have a clue, bro. Like, let me time you out for a second. We run out of meat before we run out of rice.
Like, if we're complaining about rice, meat's been gone for a long time. Like, that's not an option. It's not like there's people starving in China and somebody's like, bro, I need rice. And they're like, bro, just eat some meat. No, I don't want meat. I don't want rice.
And if you offer me meat, I'm just going to starve. I need rice. Like, that's not how that happens. And so this king has no idea what's going on with his people. But a good king does.
A good king isn't sitting in a palace eating all the fine luxuries and allowing his people to starve. A good king starves alongside his people. A good king maintains justice. You don't live in fear where there's a good king. You don't live worried where your property will be taken from you. It's not set up to where someone's bigger, stronger than you.
They just walk into your house and they're like, hey, I own this now. You're like, but I live here. Not anymore unless you want to be my slave. Like, that doesn't work under a good king. People are punished for their crimes. That's why we have a fit every time we see a police officer shoot someone who's unarmed.
Because it goes against our sense of justice. It breaks down the system as to how it ought to work. And there's always extenuating circumstances and things. But cops just shoot and shoot people who are unarmed. And I love, like recently there was some stuff and people came on and said, well, nobody's talking about all the people who are shooting each other in inner cities. And it's like, right.
Because they're not cops. That's how that works. Like a teacher jumps up and slaps a kid. You don't go, yeah, but the kids slap each other some. It's like, no. Like, the system's breaking down here.
And that's why we celebrate when cops get it right. That's why we're excited when justice is maintained. That's why we love the fact that if someone steals your property, you have someone to call and say, hey. I mean, recently Matt's truck got broken into. And they stole a guitar, which was Raz's guitar, which is great. So, like, Matt's like, my truck got broken into.
But don't worry. They only stole Raz's stuff. And so later on, a couple weeks later, we get a phone call. And we're working on stuff. And Matt gets a call. And he's like, it's the Lexington County Sheriff's Department there at my house.
And so I rode over with him because I figured he's getting arrested. I'm like, you know, I guess you got warrants. They only do house calls for a few things, man. And so, but we showed up over there, and they had the guitar. And so we didn't tell Raz about it. We pawned it and split the money.
But, no, but they gave his guitar back. And we celebrate the fact that they got it right because maintaining justice is something that happens inside of a good kingdom. And so a king, a good king maintains justice. A good king also offers grace. So he doesn't just destroy everyone who, all of his enemies are the people who don't agree with him.
He offers grace. He offers mercy. He helps people who are down. There's some form of welfare system for people who are down on their luck. Like a good king is gracious to his people. Gives what is unearned.
A good king wars for his people. That's why when you watch movies like Gladiator and Braveheart and The Patriot and basically any movie that has Mel Gibson in it, that's why the hero is at the front of the battle. Like he runs in with his men, and the bad guy is like up on a horse watching. Like if the commander of the good army is in the fray, and the commander of the bad guys is like watching, and he's like, well, I guess we're losing. Whatever, I'm going to leave. And he like rides off.
Or he just tells them to shoot arrows or cannons into his own men because he doesn't care because he's not a part of it. And so a good king actually wars with and for his people. Like I was recently watching another Mel Gibson movie. We were soldiers, and he was talking to them before they left, and he said, I can't promise that all of you will come back. He said, but what I do promise is that my boots will be the first one on the ground and the last one's off when we leave. And there's just this sense of like, yes, that is how that's supposed to work.
If you're going to lead, you need to be a part of, in front of, warring with your people and not having them fight and sacrifice for you. The other thing that happens with a good king is that they can be trusted. You don't always know what they're doing. That's the way it works with the White House. We don't have all the information that President Obama has. I don't wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning and have people brief me on what's going on in remote parts of the world, but he does.
And then he makes decisions based off of that. And we go to war, don't go to war based off of that. And with a good king, what you see is you see all these other things. You know that they maintain justice, that they don't have a sacrifice for them, but they sacrifice with and for us. And there's just this sense of, I don't know what they're doing, but I know we can trust them. And that's what it looks like in the kingdom with a good king.
I don't know why we're doing this plan. I just know that this king is trustworthy. And so we're going to look, and what we've asked early on was, is Jesus a good king? And today we're going to kind of look at and try to answer that question. We're looking to see if Jesus is a good king. So we'll be in the end of Matthew's gospel.
And what we know is that Jesus is the ruling, reigning, forever king. He's the king of the universe who's created everything and rules and reigns over it. And here's something we know about kings. Kings love their thrones. They do. It's like people with cars now.
So like, you know, the show like Pimp My Ride or whatever. Like kings used to do that with their thrones. So if you look them up online, there's some very elaborate, intense, cool thrones. Like King Ivan the Terrible, his whole throne was made out of ivory. So ivory's hard to come by, so he made his whole throne out of it.
Like there's the king of Denmark had his whole throne made out of narwhal tusks. Which narwhals seem like they're made up animals because it's like a whale unicorn thing. And so like you see him in the movie Elf and you're like, I'm pretty sure that's fictitious. And then you look it up online and they actually exist. Just for the record, narwhals are real. And he made his whole throne out of narwhal tusks, which is pretty gangster way to make a throne.
And so, yeah, the king of Ivan the Terrible had his whole throne made out of ivory. Solomon in the Bible had his throne made out of ivory and then coated in gold. So it didn't even matter. Like he just had to tell people, I don't know if you know this, but under all that gold, there's ivory. Like it just, you know, take your word for it. But it's like, but he had it coated in gold and he had it seated up six steps.
And there was two lines, gold lines next to it. And there were lines on every step that went up to his throne. Because kings love their throne. But here's what we see of Jesus. Isaiah 6 says that Isaiah sees God high and lifted up, seated on a throne, and that there are angels worshiping him. And then John tells us in his gospel, chapter, so y'all know who it's coming from, chapter 12, says that Isaiah saw Jesus.
So that Isaiah sees Jesus high and lifted up on a throne, ruling and reigning as the God of all creation. Philippians 2 tells us that he was equal with God, but did not see equality as a thing to be grasped, but rather humbled himself and lowered himself and came to earth. What we see in Jesus is that he doesn't love his throne, he leaves his throne. That the throne of a king is where their seat of power and authority is and that Jesus leaves it. And so what I want us to know before we get into this text is we're looking to see, is Jesus a good king? And we're also looking at the fact that as we read through this, I want us to have firmly set in our mind that this is the king.
Jesus is the ruling, reigning king of the universe. So when we watch movies and a king leaves his palace for a little while and goes and lives among his people, we're like, oh, look at this, like he's learning what it's like. When you watch Undercover Boss, it's that same thing where the CEO of a company is figuring out what it looks like to go pick up trash. And we're like, good, he needs to learn what that looks like. And what we see in Jesus is that he leaves his throne and he joins his people. And we'll read about him now in Matthew chapter 27.
I'm going to pray. We're going to hop in and we're going to look at the ruling, reigning king of the universe as he was in life on earth. God, I pray that through your Holy Spirit, you would apply your word to us today. That you would teach us, that you would firmly plant in our minds the picture of the ruling, reigning king of the universe as we read through this text. That we would not be able to escape the drastic reality of what Jesus deserves and what he receives. Speak to us today in Jesus name.
Amen. We'll start in verse 11. So this is Jesus after he's been arrested, after he has been taken before the Sanhedrin, which is the ruling body of the Jewish people. And they've taken him now to Pilate, who is a governor over Judea area. Now Jesus stood before the governor and the governor asked him, are you the king of the Jews?
Because that's what they brought him in saying he was the Christ. He says he's a king. So he says, are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus says, you have said so. But when he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he gave no answer.
Then Pilate said to him, do you not hear how many things they testify against you? But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge. So the governor was greatly amazed. All right. I want us to picture this. Jesus is in front of a governor.
A governor of not even like a really well-to-do area of the Roman Empire. Colossians 1 says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn among all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven on earth, visible or invisible, whether thrones or rulers, dominions or authorities. All things were created through him and for him. And they exist by him, that in him all things hold together. So this is the creator of the universe standing in front of a governor to be sentenced.
On trial in front of a governor. Not even Caesar, which would have been humiliating, embarrassing, and laughable, but in front of a governor. Creator of the universe. And he doesn't defend himself. He sits in silence. John tells us that at one point Pilate looks at him and because he won't defend himself, because he won't make any argument against the claims that they make against him, even though they make a long list of claims, outlandish ones.
Pilate looks at him and says, do you not realize I have the ability to release you or crucify you? And Jesus responds, no you don't. Jesus says, you only have the authority that's been given to you by my father. You have no authority over me because Jesus is the ruling reigning king, but he stands before a governor to be sentenced. Fifteen. Now at the feast, the governor was accustomed to release.
There's a big Jewish holiday going on. It was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, who do you want me to release for you? Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ? So he just calls out the two prisoners that were most well known.
Who do you want me to release? Barabbas, this notorious criminal, or Jesus who's called Christ? For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up. Besides, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, have nothing to do with that righteous man. For I have suffered much because of him today in a dream. So his wife had had a dream where apparently it was obvious to her that they shouldn't do anything to Jesus.
There's a spiritual reality to her dream, which is a real thing about dreams, not about all dreams. So sometimes my wife will wake up and she'll be giving me a dirty look and I'll be like, what? And she's like, you were doing a bunch of junk in my dream. And I was like, well, I was behaving myself while I slept. But his wife sends him a thing saying that God had spoken to her.
Something had happened through this dream. And she says, have nothing to do with this righteous man. For I have suffered much because of him today in a dream. Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, which of the two do you want me to release for you? And they said, Barabbas.
Pilate said to them, then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ? They all said, let him be crucified. And he said, why? What evil has he done? And they shouted all the more, let him be crucified. So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but that rather a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd saying, I am innocent of this man's blood.
See to it yourselves. And all the people answered, his blood be on us and on our children. Then he released for them Barabbas and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. So he stands in front of this crowd and he says, who do you want me to release? This notorious criminal who we know is an insurrectionist and murderer, Barabbas or Jesus, the Christ, the king. And they say, release to us Barabbas and kill Jesus.
And he says, why? What has he done? And they say, we don't care. Crucify him. His blood be on us, not on you. Crucify him.
Kill him. And to the point that a riot was breaking out. That they're beginning to realize that he's lost control of this crowd so that he placates them by killing Jesus. And what it says is that he scourged him, having scourged him, which means that he was beaten by Roman guards who had made a profession of torturing people. So having been tortured, Jesus was delivered over to be crucified, which means that they're going to take him and they're going to nail him from a cross beam through his hands or his wrist right here.
And through the top of his feet, they're going to drop that beam in the ground and he's going to hang there until he dies. A lot of times people were crucified without having been scourged. Jesus was scourged first, which means they took a cat of nine tails and ripped his back and flesh open so that you'd be able to see his ribs. And they would throw salt in it to burn the wounds, make it more painful, but also to stop the bleeding so that he would last longer for them to continue beating him. So that's the state Jesus is in.
The king of the universe. Beaten. Tortured. And heading to a cross. 27. Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor's headquarters and they gathered the whole battalion before him.
So every soldier there. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. And twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. So they take a crown of thorns and they stick it down so that it stabs into his head. And they put it on his head and they put a reed in his hand, in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him saying, Hail, King of the Jews.
One of the only times Jesus was ever treated appropriately as a king was while he was being mocked by a mob of soldiers. You see, they gave him a scarlet robe. And the book of Revelation says that when he returns, he will have a scarlet robe, but it'll be a robe that's been dipped in blood. They gave him a crown of thorns, but the book of Revelation in chapter 19 says that when he returns, on his head, he'll have many crowns. Because he's not just the king of the Jews, as they mockingly say to him, but he's the king of kings. Meaning he rules over all governments, all kings, all rulers forever.
Including the Romans. They put a reed in his hand, but Revelation says that he'll have a sword coming out of his mouth, which is to strike down the nations. Which seems to be that he's going to destroy his enemies through the power of his word, which is how he creates and moves and works. And that he'll rule the world with an iron sepulter. So they give him a reed to hold in his hand, but he'll have one of iron.
And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, Hail, king of the Jews. And they spit on him, and they took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him. As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, that compelled this man to carry his cross. Seemingly because Jesus could only carry it so far, having already been tortured. Stayed up all night being beaten by Jewish people on their trial and then was handed over to the Romans in the morning.
33. And when they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of a skull, they offered him wine to drink mixed with gall. But when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there.
And over his head, they put the charge against him, which read, This is Jesus, the king of the Jews. That was the charge against him. He had declared that he was a king, and they killed him for it. He declared that he was Christ, and they killed him for it. Christ means leader, ruler, one who was going to set up a kingdom. They knew what had been promised.
They knew what was being said. They knew why he was being killed, and they labeled him as such. Jesus was appropriately labeled. The crime against him was true. He was the king of the Jews. But not just the Jews, everybody.
Jesus Christ, king of the universe, leaves his throne in heaven, is born in a manger, lives a perfect sinless life, and this is how he dies. Acts says he dies at the hands of lawless men. That he was destroyed, crucified, murdered. King of the universe. He didn't love his throne and hold on to his throne, but he heads to a cross. He deserves a throne.
He deserves praise. He deserves honor. He deserves worship. He deserves glory. And instead, he takes shame and defeat and torture and pain and leaves his throne and heads to a cross. So the question is, is Jesus a good king?
Does he meet the criteria? As we read through this, is Jesus a good king? We said that a king takes on the plight of his people. And the Bible tells us that Jesus died to pay for our sin. That he joined us in our mess. That he didn't sit far off and declare to us, work it out, fix it yourselves, be really good.
But no, he joined us in our mess. That he walked through life and lived as we couldn't live. And that he died in our place. That he went to the cross because he is a good king who joins in and takes part in the plight of his people. That he doesn't have his people sacrificed for him, but he sacrifices for his people. He said that he maintains justice, that a king is just and fair.
The cross is a pure, unadulterated declaration of the justice of God. Because sin will be paid for. So much so that Jesus, God of the universe, would pay for it himself. You see, when we talk about a king has justice, that sin is paid for, that wrongs are righted, that crime does not go unpunished. And that he offers grace, we see perfectly in the cross that Jesus does both. Perfectly that he does both.
I'm going to read something from Romans chapter 3 just to put this picture in our brains. It says, That's all of us. All of us fall short. This is Romans 3. And are justified by his grace as a gift. Which justified means made right.
So Jesus makes us right by his grace. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation. Which means that he was destroyed on behalf of wrath. Of God's wrath in our place. That we deserve wrath, but Jesus took it. That's what propitiation means.
Propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness. Or another way to say this is justice. Because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It looked like, as we read through the Old Testament, that people got off. That people who sinned and deserved to be destroyed didn't get destroyed.
People who rebelled weren't. That justice wasn't maintained because God let people go. And what we see in the cross is that justice is maintained. Sin will be paid for. He had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time.
So that he might be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. What that means is this. Every sin will be paid for. All rebellion will be paid for. The question is, will it be paid for by us or by Jesus? Every time someone has wronged you.
Every time someone's stolen from you, taken from you, abused you, hurt you. And there's that moment in you, there's something inside of you that cries out for justice and punishment. The cross adamantly declares that there will be justice and punishment. But there's also grace. That Jesus would take the justice and punishment that we deserve and he would take it on himself so that we can have freedom. So he does both.
And just for those of us in this room who've been hurt, who've been harmed, who've been assaulted, who've had people rob us. Know this very clearly. Justice will be paid. And it'll either be paid on them, on those who harmed and hurt us, or it'll be paid on Jesus. And for those of us in this room who are in rebellion, who have harmed and hurt, who have stolen from God, who have fought against him. Know this.
Justice will be paid. Either by you, either by us, or by Jesus. But we're offered free grace because of what Jesus accomplishes on the cross. So he's a king who maintains justice and offers grace. We said that he wars for his people, that he steps in, that he leads in the battle, and that's exactly what Jesus does. That he went to a cross on our behalf.
That he didn't sit far back and declare that we had to go work it out. Christianity following Jesus isn't about us warring for ourselves. It's not about us earning it on our own. It's not about us achieving anything. It's not about us being very moralistic or doing our religious duty or showing up to things so that God gives us points. We don't fight this battle for ourselves.
Jesus stepped in and fought it on our behalf. And we're brought in by his victory. That Jesus has already won the war in our place and we just get to live in light of what's already been accomplished for us. Because he went to battle for us. Ultimately, a good king can be trusted. We so often have no clue what God's doing.
When there's pain, when there's hurt, when there's harm, when we're confused, we have no idea what he's up to. But the cross answers the question of whether or not God can be trusted forever. We look at the cross and we know that God is good and that he's for our good and that he can be trusted. We don't know what he's doing all the time. But we know he's good.
We know he's for our good. So much so that he would die for us because he loves us and he cares for us, which means he can handle all the rest of it. But Jesus stepped in our place and can be trusted because he went to the cross for us. Where we see Jesus's power and authority is not a throne. Where we're given the clearest image and picture as we read through scripture to know that Jesus is in charge and that he rules and that he reigns. It's not him seated on a throne.
He doesn't sit on a throne and hand out edict after edict for us to behave. For how we should follow him. For what his good subjects look like. Where we see Jesus's power and authority is on the cross. Where he's high and lifted up and deserving of honor and glory and worship. The king of the universe isn't on a throne but on a cross.
That Jesus left his throne so that we could be brought back to him. And he went to a cross. That that is his unlikely throne. Because he didn't come to set up an earthly kingdom but he came to destroy our ultimate enemy of sin, death, hell, and Satan. And he went to a cross on our behalf. Then he was buried.
Three days later he rose again. And he is seated on a throne. He does rule and reign over all of eternity. And one day he will return. To bring his church home. And to pay for, to punish the rest of sin.
But we see him high and lifted up and glorified on a cross, not a throne. That he went to a throne by way of a cross. That the one God of the universe who deserved all honor and all praise and all glory and all worship and all followership forever. Took on our plight. Fought for justice to offer grace. Won the battle we could never win.
Proved that we can trust him. And was highly exalted on a cross. Not sitting in luxury. Declaring that we have to work really hard to follow him. And that we get to, by faith, follow him. As he pays for our sin.
The band's going to come back up. And we're going to praise Jesus. Who paid for our sin. Who is a good king. And who is worth following with everything that we have. With all of our lives.
Forever. Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for the love that is offered to us through Jesus. God, I pray that you would continue to teach us how to worship and follow you as a king. As the ruler of all creation. Who, instead of destroying us when we rebelled, joined us and was destroyed on our behalf.
We praise you. We thank you.
Kingdom Parables
Transcript
Well, good morning. Jesus is a king. Jesus is the king. And that's what we've been spending the past several weeks talking about is that Jesus comes as a king, that he comes to us through history as the eternal king. So the Old Testament is going to say that there's a prophesied king who's going to come in the line of David.
And then the New Testament is going to say that king is Jesus, the eternal king that is the king of kings, that princes will rise up and bow down to, that is in charge of everything, is Jesus. And so what we've been doing for the past several weeks is we've been looking at what it means for Jesus to be king, for him to be a king, the king of our lives, of the universe. And what does it mean for him to have a kingdom and what does his kingdom look like? How does it work? And so that's what we've been spending some time doing. So the first week we looked and said that you can't have two kings.
That's not how kings work. And so some of you may have read, you know, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and you said there are two kings in that one. That's a made-up story. That's never happened. And there's talking animals there. Like there's other things going on.
You can only have one king. And so Jesus shows up, says he's king. Herod, who is a king, tries to kill him. And that we basically have the same options. We can get off of the throne and quit trying to be king of our lives. Or we can try to fight Jesus.
We said, so you can't have two kings. Then we looked at how we respond to Jesus' kingdom, that we respond in repentance, that he comes and we change to him because he is in charge of everything. And then last week we spent some time talking about the fact that since he is an eternal king, he deals with eternal problems. And his kingdom is a kingdom of light that advances against the domain of darkness and that we actually, as church, family, get to be a part of that advancing kingdom. So what we're going to do today is we're going to be in Matthew chapter 13.
And we've been spending some time in Matthew. Pretty much this whole series has been in Matthew. So we were in Matthew chapter 1 and 2. Then we were in 3 and 4. And we spent some time in 5. And so we're jumping on ahead into Matthew 13.
And Jesus, a good bit of his ministry, would tell stories. And we know them, we call them parables. Which just means, and I said early on, that he told confusing stories. And some of them are. Because sometimes he just says, the kingdom of God is like this. Or following God is like this.
And he'll just tell a story. And he just, he doesn't explain it. He's just like, it's like this. Boom. And he just walks away. And you're like, well, what are you talking about?
What does that mean? And so, so we're looking at some parables. And we're going to look at just a few short ones in Matthew 13. That where Jesus says, this is what my kingdom is like. This is what the kingdom of God is like. And so, the two things we're going to see as we look at, we're going to look at four parables.
But they kind of come in chunks together. Two main points Jesus is making is that the kingdom of God advances. And that the kingdom of God is priceless. And so that's what we're going to be looking at today. I'm going to pray. And then we'll hop in and look at Matthew 13.
God, we just thank you for this opportunity to gather together as church family. Pray that you would, through your Holy Spirit, teach us, lead us, and help us to continue to grow in what it looks like to be a gospel-centered community on mission in our city. Thank you for your grace and your goodness towards us. In Jesus' name, amen. Matthew 13, page number is up there. If you're using one of the Bibles that's in the pew, one of those blue and white Bibles.
If you don't own a Bible, take that with you. That's our gift to you. If you do own a Bible, leave that here. Unless you know of someone you can give it to. Matthew 13, 31 through 33 is the first one we're going to read. And it says this.
He put another parable before them. And so what we said is that a parable is just an illustration, a story, where Jesus is going to basically, like we would say a simile. It's going to say this. The kingdom is like this. And so he put another parable before them saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree.
So that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. Okay, so he's going to tell two back to back, and that's the first one. And what he's saying is that the kingdom advances. The kingdom of God advances. And what we're going to look at, we're going to kind of look at it in two different ways. But Jesus has a bunch of people around, and then he would just teach.
And sometimes he would just teach with authority, which just meant that he didn't have a text. So synagogue leaders would open the Bible, and they'd say, they'd read it, and they'd talk about it, and they'd say, this is what it means. Jesus would just be like, you know how the Bible says this? I say this. And it's like, you can't do that. Are you allowed to do that?
And so people would follow him around, and he would teach with authority. And then he would teach parables. So he would just say, the kingdom of heaven is like this. And sometimes he would explain them to his disciples, and sometimes he wouldn't. And here's what's great about this parable. First of all, we hear that, and we're like, okay, good.
The kingdom of parable is like a mustard seed that a guy planted. And I know all of you are like, yes, mustard seeds. I know so much about them. Like, I mean, I had to Google stuff, because I'm like, I want to find out how big mustard seeds are, what mustard plants are like. Because the most I know about mustard is French's is the best kind. That's about what I got when it comes to mustard.
But here's what's great about this parable, is that Jesus undersells the kingdom, it seems like. So if he had looked at them and said, the kingdom of heaven is like a cedar from Lebanon. All this Jewish audience would have been like, mmm, good. Like, that sounds great. Like, but he says the kingdom of heaven is a mustard seed. Everybody was like, what?
Run that by me again, boss? Like, how does that work? What are you talking about? It's kind of like, and he doesn't explain it, and we're going to kind of unpack it. But it's kind of like the, you know, ogres are like onions kind of thing.
It's like, why? Because they have layers. Well, parfait has layers, and it's better. And so that's kind of what I think they were hearing. It's like, mustard seeds, you're going to have to do a little more here to explain what you're talking about. But let me just unpack a little bit of the story here.
So he immediately, when he says this, everybody's like tracking because it's like this was a weird thing for him to say that the kingdom is like. Mustard seeds are tiny. So that if you took a mustard seed, you could pinch it in between your fingers and play that which hands the mustard seed in kind of game. Like, and let someone guess because they're really small. If I held one, it would just kind of could sit right there about as small as a BB, if not a little bit smaller. Mustard seeds are really small.
And so when he says they're the smallest of all seeds, he means all the seeds that they were familiar with. He's not speaking scientifically as the creator God. He's speaking in context with the people he's talking about because there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds, but not that they would have been familiar with and used. And he's talking about in the context of a garden. So what he's saying is mustard seeds are the smallest seeds y'all use to plant in your gardens.
But here's what happens. Once you plant it, it grows into pretty much a small tree. So that it becomes the largest garden plant. So large that birds come and make nests in it. That's his parable. That's what the kingdom is like.
And so what he's saying, first of all, is that if you got to choose, no one would pick the kingdom based off of how it's going to get started. That it's going to be so epically underwhelming when it starts. So that Jesus is walking around. He has a ministry for about three years. This is the God of the universe has a ministry for about three years. When he dies, 120 people.
God of the universe plants a church. Three years. 120 people. Like I've read books that would be like, we need to coach that guy up. He's doing some things wrong. Like there was 6,000 at one point and he told them to eat and drink his blood.
That's poor strategy. He freaked everybody out. Like Jesus, when big crowds would come, he would say really hard things to him. And so what he's saying is that his kingdom is going to be very small, very seemingly like it's not going to do anything. So that when he dies, he dies and then three days later he rises again and there's 120 people that are following him.
And you wouldn't think, well, obviously that's going to take over the world. Obviously that's going to have massive impacts on world history. Obviously this guy who spent most of his time with 12 men, one of whom betrays him. So even that gets cut down to 11. Obviously that's going to turn the world upside down. But it does.
And that's his point. Is that the kingdom advances externally. And that's the way we're going to look at it today. Is that this first one we're going to look at is it advances externally. Which means that more and more and more people are going to become believers. Are going to follow Jesus.
And that's exactly what happened. So there was 120 then. There are now in the world 2 billion people that follow Jesus. That claim him as king. That submit and surrender their lives to him. 2 billion.
120. I read this quote. And I think it's interesting because I don't understand mustard. Basically mustard plants, once you get them going, are hard to get rid of. And they spread and they grow in unlikely conditions. So that when we were looking up some of the places that mustard grows, it's like Russia and Africa.
And Egypt. And Australia. Like it was all these. It's like, so it's not a regional climate type thing. Mustard is a hardy plant that grows well. And once it gets to growing, it's hard to get rid of.
It says this. The point in other words. This is John Dominic Crossan. The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbial small seed and grows into a shrub of 3 or 4 or 5 feet in height. It is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted. That it tends to get out of control.
That it tends to track birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, Jesus said, is what the kingdom of God is like. Like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. So mustard can grow in unlikely situations and grows well once it gets going. One of the best examples, I think, in modern examples for us is the Chinese church. So the church in China under Mao, Mao Zedong, in 1949, he decided he was going to get rid of the church.
He's one of the guys who called it the opiate of the masses. And he wanted to stamp out and get rid of the church. So what he did was there's about a million believers in China. He sent away 10,000 missionaries. So there were 10,004 missionaries in China and about a million Chinese believers.
He sent all of the 10,000 missionaries out. It was referred to as an unwanted Exodus or undesired Exodus. So that was 1949. So it was about 60 years later in China. The estimates, because it's not really legal to be Bible-believing following Christians in China. There are some state-sanctioned churches, but they kind of have regulations on what they're allowed to talk about.
So there are a lot of underground churches. But the estimates on how many believers there are in China now, 60 years later, under a very repressive attempt to stamp out Christianity and religion, is somewhere between 50 and 100 million. So it was a million, and he was like, well, let's get rid of them. And it didn't work. Because that's what Christianity is like. It's like a mustard seed that's very difficult to get rid of.
They estimate that about 10,000 people become believers every day in China. So he got rid of 10,000 missionaries, and there's 10,000 added every day now to be missionaries to China. Because that's the way the church works. Because that's what the kingdom is like. It's like a mustard seed that starts off really small and underwhelming, and then grows and grows and advances and moves and becomes really hard to get rid of. That's why we get really excited about church planting.
That's why we get really excited about community groups and why we want to launch community groups all over our city, why we want to plant community groups all over our city, because a handful of believers in Jesus genuinely following him as king is a dangerous thing. A beautifully dangerous thing when it comes to being a part of his kingdom advancing. Because the kingdom does advance. And it will advance. And so one of the things we need to know as believers, and especially as we try to build with people and we're trying to build relationships and trying to help people meet Jesus and show what it looks like to follow Jesus, and sometimes that can be discouraging, Jesus says the kingdom advances.
Period. Matthew 16, Jesus says, I will build my church. Which means that all of our effort, all of our energy is worth it, because he is going to advance his kingdom. All the energy you put into building relationships with your coworkers, all the energy you're putting into trying to just be a good neighbor and love and bless people in our city, with the hopes that some might would meet Jesus and with the hopes that some might would just be blessed by the fact that you know Jesus. It's worth it. Because the kingdom does advance.
And that's why we care about and get excited about things that look small and like not super likely like they're going to do great things, because that's what the mustard seed is. If you laid them on a table and said, all right, we're going to grow the biggest plant and let kids pick which one they wanted, or if you didn't know anything about them, not a lot of people are going to be like, oh, this tiny one. Duh. It's going to be great later. That's why we get super excited about it. I was having a conversation with my grandmother.
She's a sweet lady. This is a fun conversation. But I had a conversation with her on vacation this year, and she said she, she, my granddad had been a pastor, so she was asking questions. She always asks them questions about the church, church plant, what, what it is, what we're doing, what a church plant is, because she's just kind of, you know, it's a new idea to her. And so she said, she said, let me ask you something. I said, what?
She said, if God called you to a church, would you go? I was like, what? She said, if God called you to pastor a church, would you? And I said, well, if God told me to, sure. She said, really? I said, yes, ma'am.
And she said, well, I'm going to pray that he calls you to a church. And then she said, cause I just, this thing you're doing, I don't really know what it is. And I was like, I was like, okay, well, just caveat conversation I had to have with her, which was if God calls me, sure, I'll do what God wants me to, but I don't think he's going to. And if a church just calls me, no, for several reasons. One of which being that they don't have good sense. And that sounds like a bad idea.
If those are the kind of decisions they make. So anyway, but that's why we get super excited about what we get to be a part of. That's why, that's why it's worth the energy and the effort we're putting in to start something new in West Columbia. And, and why it's amazing and exciting that we have five community groups and the options and the opportunities to have more eventually. Because Jesus doesn't need much. And he actually likes to show off with something really small and seemingly insignificant.
Because he gets a lot of glory from it. That's why I get real excited that we're a ragtag scrub team. Because it's like, Jesus, you're going to have to show up for this to be good. And he can, and he does. And he says that his kingdom does advance and will advance. And then it says, all right, so first, that's the first one.
And we were looking at him. He's saying his kingdom advances. We're looking at him in two different ways. Kingdom advances externally. So people will meet Jesus.
More churches will be planted. More groups will be launched. 33. He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened. Again, just kingdom of heaven's like this.
And he doesn't explain it. It doesn't go through. Just, that's what it is. I just want to time out for just a second. One of the things that I, it's very exciting just, just to kind of look at when he tells these stories. The first one is a man takes a mustard seed and plants it.
And the second one is a woman takes 11 and does this. And so even in just Jesus is telling parables, he's inviting everybody in to be a part of his mission. And it's just, it's just cool. So I just wanted to point that out. But the way we're going to look at this one, just mental image wise, and he's just saying the kingdom advances, but the kingdom advances internally as well.
So the kingdom advances externally and the kingdom advances internally. So you take a bunch of flour and he says that it's, how many measures? Three measures of flour, which was about 50 pounds, enough to feed about a hundred people. And so when Jesus first started and he was like the kingdom of heaven's like a mustard seed and some of our outdoorsy gardeny type people were like, I'm tracking. This sounds great. Like a tree.
Okay. Hmm. And then some of, some of us were like, okay. And now he's talking about bread. So I'm like, all right, all right, I'm listening.
Carbohydrates. I'm tracking. Tell me more about this lady with the bread. Do you have any samples that I might understand leaven better? But here's, here's how leaven works.
You take a little bit of starter, which is just like a gross ball of goo. And then, uh, you feed it. You can feed it flour and the starter stays together. And then you add just a little bit to the bread you're using and yeast spreads through all of it. So you can't have like half yeasted.
You can't, you can't have like, it's going to take over the whole thing. So when she adds yeast to this, she can't just have a little bit or she adds a little bit and it takes over 50 pounds of it. That he says it leavens the whole lump. And here's the thing. It doesn't look different. It just operates differently.
It doesn't have this magical external change. It's just going to work differently when you stick it in an oven. When you cook it, it's going to rise. It's going to have different internal properties. And here's what's great about that. What he, what we're looking at here is that the kingdom advances internally.
So some of you became believers. This is what Jesus does inside of our souls. Is that he takes over everything. And that's beautiful and terrifying. But Jesus takes over everything.
So some of us are in here like, man, I'm a Christian, but I just, I'm just not getting it right. Like I'm just messing it up. I feel like a lump. He leavens the whole lump. So if you're like, I'm a lump, good.
Leaven's going to take over the whole lump. That's what he's going to do. That's how that works. And here's the thing. If you become a Christian, you don't look different. It's not like people become a Christian and start smiling like an idiot all the time.
That's not how that works. Why are you so happy? Well, I'm glad you asked. That's not how that works. I'm a Christian. I love Jesus.
My face looks like this most of the time. Like, it's not what happens. It's not an external thing. He changes internally. He takes over our souls. My other grandmother, I just got grandmother stories today, but my other grandmother, when we were growing up, my parents would have to go out of town some and they would invite our grandparents to come watch us.
And so they would just come stay at our house and watch the three boys. And so at first it was just like, they would invite them in and they would be like, just, just hang out, watch, be grandparents, do your, do your grandparent thing. And, but my grandmother, her name is Ea, which is just Yoruba, which is African language means grandmother, but Ea can't sit still and not do things. So when they're like, come relax, just get to be a grandparent. She's incapable of that. So she would, she would get into everything.
So like before they came anyway, we had to like clean the house and hide stuff. And inevitably at the end of the week, she would have found it and been like, Oh, we're, we're reorganizing all this. She, she came one time for like four days when they came back, she had rearranged the kitchen. So that like my parents came back and would like open to get a plate and there'd be cups. And it was just like, why? Why would a person do this?
And the great part was that my parents were just like, we'll get used to it. Like they didn't change it back. It just seemed like too much work, but she didn't like the feng shui of kitchen organization. I don't know. I don't know what drove her to do that, but she just reorganized. So then what they had to do is this happened about once a year.
They started giving her jobs. They started when she was coming, they were like, Hey, we want you to watch the kids and paint these two rooms and do wallpaper. And it got to where they had a list long enough that it was like, do this first, this second. If you get to this until my grandparents would come watch us and like redecorate our house. But my parents had to like point them in the right direction because otherwise they were just going to get into everything.
Here's what happens though. Jesus does that in our souls. So for the most part, most of us, we want to become a Christian because we, we see a glaring need for Jesus here. Jesus, I want to place my faith in you because I need you here. This is a hot mess. I need you active here.
And he shows up and he does that. He changes us. He moves us. He rescues us there. And then you're like, thank you so much. Have a seat.
And he's like, Nope. It's not how that works. Jesus comes in. We talked last week. Jesus isn't a cat that just, we add to our life to add a little bit of comfort and a little bit of, when I feel sad, I get to hug and pet. And then he goes and kind of minds his own business in the corner.
Jesus is a king. And so Jesus leavens the whole lump. He takes over everything. So we'll invite him in because we need help with our children. And then, and then he's like, he helps you learn how, what that looks like and rearranges your view on parenting. And then he's like, you want to talk about, let's talk about finances.
And you're like, whoa, no. Hey, let's talk about your view on relationships. No, no, no. That's not, that's not why you were invited in. And then let me, let me just tell you this. He's going to leaven the whole lump.
C.S. Lewis said at one point that, that God loves us the same way that an artist loves a masterpiece in a lot of ways. And that by the time an artist is done with a masterpiece, that if the canvas could talk, it would be a very painful process because there would be times when he had to restart and re scrape and re, re begin what he was doing. And, and, and over time, eventually the canvas would just be saying, couldn't I just be a sketch? Couldn't you just like make me nice enough? And he says, no.
See, God doesn't have a sleepy love for you. He has an active love for us and that we're satisfied way more quickly than he is. So most of us reach a place and we're like, I feel pretty good. And he's like, no, we got, we got a lot of work to do because I care about you enough to continue working when it's difficult. Because he's going to leaven the whole love. He is going to take over internally.
So here, here's the thing. Romans says that we'll be conformed to the image of his son, that we're predestined to be conformed to the images of his son. Romans 8 says that. And so what's going to happen is that over our life as a Christian, if we've genuinely placed our faith in Jesus and are following him, he's going to continue to change our outlook on, on everything that our, our, our way we look at money is his, the way we look at relationships is his, the way we view marriage is his, the way we view sex is his, the way we view every bit of our time, everything belongs to him. And he's going to continue to take over.
And here's the thing we've said repeatedly that kingdoms only advance militantly, that a kingdom advances against the kingdom militantly. Jesus, because he loves you and is gracious to you is going to militantly take over your soul. And so a lot of times we draw lines in the sand and we hunker down and we say, all right, if you want this one, you're going to have to take it. We draw battle lines and we say, all right, Jesus, this is going to be a fight. Jesus wins. He's going to, and he cares enough about you to fight you.
And so some of you, maybe that's, that's your story. You became a Christian and you're like, man, this has been like a fight. Since I became a Christian. And Jesus cares enough about you to not stop, to not, not let you go and to continue to advance in your soul, his kingdom, because of his gracious love for you. And he's going to take over the whole thing. So.
Let me give some encouragement, because that is true. If you are here and you're saying, I just don't feel like I'm growing. Keep following, keep fighting, keep putting yourself in the right positions, keep trying to get as close to his grace as he possible. Gather with your community group, gather when we get together on Sundays, keep reading scripture, because Jesus is going to leaven everything. He is going to, his kingdom is going to advance in you. And if you've been fighting him, surrender as quickly as possible.
It's the best advice I can give you, because he is not going to be satisfied. There are no holdouts of your old kingdom allowed anymore. There are no areas that Jesus doesn't get to be. There are no dark corners and closets that he's not going to mess with. There are no places that his light isn't going to penetrate. And surrender as quickly as you can.
And ask him to help you surrender. So that he might continue to advance his kingdom in your soul. Because he's going to. Okay. So here's what we're going to do.
Oh, let me say this. As you become a Christian, a lot of times people think that I will sin less. And that's true. Ish. But that's not the predominant way that we grow as Christians.
One of the predominant ways that we grow as Christians is that we see our sin more. We see it more clearly. We see it more often. And so a lot of times you're thinking, oh my goodness, I didn't even realize that this whole aspect of my life was not in line with, I feel so terrible. And it's God's grace to show us our sin. That's one of the ways that he helps us grow.
And so as we continue to grow as Christians, we're just going to see more sin and have more areas we get to repent, more areas we get to surrender. And so sometimes people think, oh, I became a Christian. I was doing really well. And now I know that I've got this scenario and this scenario and this scenario. And the truth is, you had him the whole time. Jesus and his grace is now showing them to you.
And that is growth. And he is going to take over everything. Okay. Now we can jump down. Matthew 13, 44. So in between these sets of parables, he explains another one that he told earlier in Matthew.
And so we're just skipping over his explanation and jumping to 44. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Okay. Two stories, two parables.
First one, there's a guy in a field and he finds a treasure in the field. So we don't know why he was in the field, why he was digging in this field that he didn't own, but he's there. He finds a treasure. Maybe he just, the treasure was there and he covers it up. So he hides it.
He's like, Oh my goodness, I found a treasure. Like, have you ever thought about like daydreamed about finding treasure? At least when you were eight and wanted to be a pirate. Like, so he finds treasure and he covers it up. And then he's like, like, what do I do? And he leaves and he sees a for sale sign.
And he, dear diary, jackpot. Like, so he goes and sells everything that he has. He's just, just like, Hey, Hey man, I need to sell my truck. Like I need to, I need my, I got to sell my car. Like I got to sell everything I got. I got to sell my house.
And he sells everything that he has. I mean, nowadays he'd be like hitting up eBay, selling his lamp. Last thing, just so you know, if you're going to sell everything on eBay, sell your computer last. It's just a helpful tip. So, so he sells everything that he has. And his, his family, I just, could you can just assume that people around him think he's absolutely crazy.
And in his joy, he shows up and he's like, how much you asking for the field? And they're like, this much? And he's like, they don't know about the treasure. And so he buys the field, sold everything he had, buys the field in his joy. The second one is, uh, kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. So this guy's a merchant.
He buys and sells thing and it sells things. And he loves pearls. He loves fine pearls. Like, so he's, he's out merchanting, buying and selling. Uh, and he finds a pearl of great price. And, and it would seem from the parable Jesus tells, that he knows the value of the pearl.
And the other guy, apparently he buys it from knows it's valuable, but maybe not as valuable as it actually is. But he goes and sells all that he has. So he goes with his merchanting and sells everything he's got and comes over and buys that pearl. And that's what the kingdom of heaven is like. Real quick. How much does the kingdom of heaven cost?
The first guy. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man fell and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells. Yeah. All that he has. And he buys that field.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold. All that he had. And bought it. Here's what Jesus is saying. Well, here's what we see from the parables. The kingdom costs.
Everything. All that we have. That it takes everything. What this means for us as believers is that there is no non-radical form of Christianity. There is no normal run of the mill Christianity that when we become believers, everything is on the table. It's not, I'll decide where I'm going to work.
No, that's on the table. I'll decide what, what, what kind of, what I'm going to study in school and what, what I'm going to do with my life, what my goals are. No, that's on the table. I'll decide who, who I marry and how my relationships will work. No, that's on the table. When we approach Jesus, everything's on the table so that he gets to tell us where we live, where we go, what we do, how our life's going to play out.
Everything belongs to him that we show up and we submit to him as king. And everything is on the table because he is Lord. And so it's not, we read the Bible and decide whether or not we want to do this. Our choice isn't, is this good or is this bad? And is this what we want to do? Our choice is to submit and follow because he's Lord.
And it costs everything. What's beautiful is that's not the point of the parable. He says that, he says that it costs you everything, but that's not his point. And that's not the point he's making in the parable. So Jesus says earlier, he says that the kingdom is going to advance.
It's going to continue. It's going to move. People are going to meet Jesus. People are going to surrender and follow him. And that the kingdom is going to advance in your soul. And it's going to take over every last square inch of you.
And it's going to cost everything. But that's not the point he's making in this parable. Here's what's beautiful about this. The kingdom is worth everything. The point in the parable is that it's priceless. That these guys give up everything.
They sacrifice everything. And they don't feel like it's a sacrifice. I saw recently that there was a professional football player whose name I will not say because it's Samoan. And it's like, he and his brother both played. His brother had kidney issues and had to stop. And then when he found out that his brother needed a kidney, his immediate response was, he can have mine.
And he was a 99% match. And I was reading the article. And so the article was, professional football player has to stop playing football to give up his kidney. And so he sacrifices his kidney. He sacrifices his playing football. But at no point does that register as a sacrifice to him.
Yeah, he gets it. He had to lose weight to be in shape enough to give the kidney. And he's got to do rehab. And he can't play professional football anymore, which I'm sure is something that he has poured countless hours into. And in his brain, it's like, yeah, but that's my brother. So this is a sacrifice, but not really.
And that's kind of just a glimpse into what Jesus is saying about the kingdom. When we understand the kingdom, that yeah, yeah, it's a sacrifice. And yeah, we're giving up everything, but in our joy, because of the matchless worth, the immeasurable worth of what we're getting out of it. So what I find to be true is when, when I'm frustrated by the amount of work I'm putting into following Jesus, I feel like he's asking a lot. And I can't believe that I got to do this to be a Christian. I can't believe that other people get to live like this and do this with their, and I got to do this.
What, what I, what I've realized is I don't get the weight of my sin when that happens. I don't understand what's been given to me in the gospel. When my heart goes there, I've missed this parable because what I'm thinking is, yeah, it does cost everything. And what I'm missing is that it's worth everything and that we still get the better deal because it's priceless. That what's been given to us in Jesus has no value. You can't, you can't put a price tag on it.
It has, it's not even in the same category. So that, that they give up everything, but they don't see it that way. It's priceless. And that's what Jesus is saying. And that's what Jesus is saying. We need to understand about the kingdom is that it, yeah, it costs everything, but he's already accomplished everything for us.
So, um, I think it was last year, uh, a guy, the gas station I go to all the time called Murphy Express on Augusta road, which is right near my house. Uh, a guy won the mega millions lottery jackpot, $400 million, which is always fun. When you talk to people about someone winning the lottery, because they'll be like, yeah, but after taxes, but it was like 200 million. And it's like, bro, it's $200 million given to you for free. That's a horrible thing to complain about. Like you missed the point here, but he wins $400 million.
You ever sat and thought about, oh man, like when that happened, I thought, man, which it really doesn't matter. It was close to my house. Cause he just picked random Numbers, but it feels like it matters that it was close to my house. It's like, man, what if I won the lottery? Like you ever think about that? Like what you would do if you won the lottery.
And there's just this moment where it's like, ah, there'd be a lot of freedom with that. You wouldn't have to work. I mean, you could have, you wanted to, if you felt what you were doing fun, you wouldn't have to. Anytime your boss got on your nerves, you'd just be like, I quit. Cause you didn't need the money. You have to do what you want.
You wouldn't have to work. There's this immediate feeling of like, I wouldn't have to worry about my future. Like I'd be in control of circumstances because of the amount of money I'd have. I'd get comfort and rest. I just, I wouldn't, the stress and the weight that I carry just wouldn't be there anymore. That I just, I'd be free.
That's what, that's what you play out in your mind. And you may not add those words to it, but that's what you're thinking. When you go there about thinking about what you would do with $400 million, and you just think, oh yeah, I could put a roller coaster in my backyard. And I could pay people to run it. And that would be a good use of my money. Like you just, you go through and you think about all the stuff that you could do and the joy that it would bring you and the, the freedom that it would bring you and the comfort and the control and the power.
Like you just, all of these things that immediately you find rest in just this idea. This idea of what that would accomplish for you. And so what Jesus is saying in this parable is, God has the winning lottery ticket, but he's in the witness relocation program. So he can't go on TV. He can't go cash this thing in. It's not allowed to, but he's going to sell it to you.
Whatever you got. Here's my house. Here's my car. Here's everything I have. I'm going on an adventure. Here's my car.
Cause I'm just going to hold a ticket for a while that says I get $400 million. And I don't mind leveraging everything I have for this short period of time because of the great amount of worth that I'm going to get out of it on the back end. No brainer. And it'd be as if you couldn't talk to your family about it. So they thought you'd lost your mind.
I can explain a little bit about what's happening, but I can't tell you everything yet. You're not going to get everything yet, but just trust me. I know you don't see it, but just trust me. Jesus is saying the kingdom is that for our entire lives. That what he's accomplished for us in the cross, you don't have to work anymore. You don't have to prove your value and your worth because Jesus has already given it to you in the cross.
That when Jesus died, he took your sin. He took your debt. Some of you think, oh man, if I had $400 million, no more credit cards, no more credit card debt. I'd be out of debt. All my school loans paid off. Everything.
I just go pay cash for a house. How much? $300,000. This is going to be a while. Jesus paid our debt. Gone. And he didn't give us a clean slate.
He gave us his slate. He didn't put his back in neutral and say, go work it out. He gave us his righteousness. So we don't have to work anymore. You don't have to prove your worth. You don't have to earn it.
You don't have to be at the end of your life and look at Jesus and say, did I do well enough? He's already accomplished everything on your behalf. We know that regardless of how everything works out, there's a sovereign king in charge of the universe who's adopted us into his family and has perfect control over everything. That our hope and our security and our future is set because of what has already taken place on our behalf because of Jesus. That our invitation into the kingdom is priceless. And that every bit of everything that we give up for it is never wasted.
And at the end of the day, when we put everything, when we put everything on the line, at no point have we reached paying back what's already been given to us. At no point has it become an even trade. And that's why he says in his joy, he sells everything. Because he knows what he's getting. See, Jesus says that the kingdom is going to advance. More people are going to be brought into his kingdom.
And that the kingdom is going to advance in our souls. And that it's going to cost us everything. And that it's worth it. It's priceless. And that what we get out of it cannot be measured. Can't be counted.
That the value of the kingdom is uncomprehendable. So that when we think about what we're doing and what we're a part of, at no point does it tap out in our wildest imaginations of what has been given to us in Christ. At no point have we reached what it actually is. The band's going to come back up. We're going to sing and praise Jesus for the fact that through him, through his sacrifice on the cross, we get invited into his kingdom. That his kingdom does advance in us.
That it does advance in this city, in this world. And that it's worth everything. That what he's accomplished for us in the cross is priceless. Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your love. Thank you for the hope that's been given to us in you.
We pray, Lord, that through your Holy Spirit, you would help us to see the pricelessness of your kingdom. The great value and worth of what you've already accomplished for us in the cross. And God, we ask that you would do what you promised to do. That your kingdom would advance in our souls. That we would repent of sin. That we would continue to follow you.
That we would, when we see our sin, God, we would praise you for your grace. That you've covered it. And that you've been gracious enough to show it to us. God, we ask for your kingdom to advance in this city. For more groups to be launched. More leaders to be trained.
More churches to be planted. More relationships to be built. That God, you would take mustard seeds all over the world and continue to grow them. That your kingdom would continue to grow. And God, we ask you that you would help us to see, to taste, to feel the pricelessness of what has been accomplished for us in the cross. That an unpayable debt's been paid.
That wealth and riches, eternal grace and love, favor has been applied to our account. That we've been welcomed in because of your sacrifice. We love you. We praise you. We thank you. In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Kingdoms at War
Transcript
If you ask that question, what's wrong with the world in any group, no one says, what? Wrong with the world? I think we're good. Pretty sure we're crushing it right now. I'm pretty sure ISIS and Ebola is how things are supposed to work. I don't know why we would want to try to fix this.
Nobody does that. The truth is, everybody in this room may have a different opinion on how to fix the problem that we have, but nobody has a question as to whether or not we have a problem. Like, systematic, history-wide, worldwide problem. Right? So we're in our third week of talking about Jesus as king, that Jesus is a king and he's an eternal king.
And so here's what I want us to look at today. If Jesus is an eternal king, and if there is cosmic level problem, a cosmic level brokenness in the world, doesn't that kind of get put on his plate? Like, if he's an eternal king, if we're going to believe that, if we're going to say that Jesus is an eternal king that rules and reigns over creation forever, isn't this problem kind of his problem? That's how that works. So if you're a king and you're over a kingdom and your territory is fine and you're at peace, but everybody's dying from the plague, your kingdom's not doing so hot.
Or if everybody's well-fed but there's an army advancing, you can't, as kings, say, oh, we're doing good for another week or two until they get here. Like, you can't do that. And this is who we would take this complaint to, correct? It would be on his plate. So, like, nobody's gone to the mayor of West Columbia and said, what are you going to do about ISIS? What's your plan for fixing Ebola in Africa?
Nobody's saying that to the mayor of West Columbia, and if they are, he's going to be like, leave. Like, I have no, like, I've never sat down and written a letter to President Obama that was like, dear President Obama, what are you going to do about the ridiculous amount of potholes on the road to my house? Like, that's not going to make it to his desk because that's not his level of problem that he deals with. Does that make sense? So if we have a cosmic, worldwide, everybody agrees that there is an issue, that there's brokenness, that something is off, that this isn't how it ought to be, then doesn't that go to the king of the universe?
If Jesus is that king, doesn't that get put on his plate? So what we're going to do, we've taken the past two weeks and we've kind of looked at how Jesus' kingdom advances in a really personal manner. So we've looked at when Jesus shows up and declares that he's king, you can no longer remain neutral to that, just like if someone walked into your house and declared themselves king and owner of your house. You can't remain neutral. You can't be like, uh, all right, sounds good. Can I sit on my couch?
Like, you've got to address this problem. So Jesus shows up, declares himself king of the universe, and so we have to respond to that, and we said that we can respond like the wise men do in Matthew chapter 1 and 2, where they worship, or we could respond like Herod, where he tries to kill Jesus and defend his kingdom. Last week we looked at how we respond to Jesus as king, and that's through repentance, which is just acknowledging that we're sinful, that we're broken, and that we need him, that we need him to accomplish on our behalf what we can't accomplish, that we're not going to fix this problem, and that we need him to do it. So what we're doing today is we're zooming out.
We're going to take a very wide look at what the kingdom is, what Jesus came to accomplish, how he addresses this issue. I'm going to tell you that the Bible does agree with you that there's an issue, and it does say that Jesus addresses it, so it does actually get put to his desk. And we're going to zoom out. So if we were going to look at the kingdom, what we've kind of done is we've zoomed in on how it actually plays out personally. So if I was going to talk to you about the Roman Empire, we could zoom in on some random guy.
We could talk about Milanitis, the guy who sells horseshoes. And we could learn some things about the Roman Empire, but we wouldn't learn the wide scope of how it got started, how it ended, where its territory was, by just looking at this one guy. Just like watching Honey Boo Boo tells you something about America, but not everything about America. It's telling us something. You can learn some things, but just not everything that you would need to know, hopefully, about America. And so what we're going to do is we're going to zoom out.
I'm going to pray, and we're going to look at Jesus' kingdom as it affects, as it works on a bigger, more cosmic level. God, we thank you for the opportunity to gather and to study your word. I pray that you would reveal to us, show us, teach us about your kingdom, about how it works, and how we are invited into and involved in it. So God, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, in Jesus' name. Amen. So we will be in Matthew chapter 4 and 5.
So we've looked in Matthew chapter 1, Matthew chapter 2, and 3, and now today we'll be in 4 and 5. But we're going to start, zoomed out a little bit further. So we're going to go to Colossians 1, we're going to show it up here. This is in the book of Colossians. We studied this over the summer, and I just want to point something out to us. So it says, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
So in Jesus, we have redemption, which means He buys us back, He makes us His again, He forgives our sins, which means there's brokenness personally in our lives, and that Jesus forgives that, that He steps in and takes our place and forgives us our sin, and that through that, He invites us into His kingdom. So the first half of that says, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. Here's how the kingdom works. We've said this repeatedly, but a kingdom advances against another kingdom. Kingdoms are by their very nature militant. And so Jesus' kingdom, if He's an eternal king, is going to advance against a much larger issue than just the small answers that we would give to what would fix the problem.
So that if I was going to raise an army, if I was going to begin to take over territory, if I was going to begin to claim area, I would start with my neighbor's house because I can declare war on that. Like it's pretty even. I can go over to Mr. Kirchtoffer and tell him that I'm claiming his house. He's like 90, but he's been in like every war that America's ever fought. So I don't know.
I think I could take him, but he's scrappy. I can't declare war on Russia. I mean, I could. We could decide right now that I'm going to declare war on Russia. Y'all could vote. We could say we were doing it.
Russia wouldn't care. Wouldn't do anything about it. They wouldn't even show up on their radar. See, what happens is when Jesus shows up and declares that he's a king, they think, okay, militant advance against the enemy. And everyone in the room thinks, Rome. Jesus is going to overthrow Rome.
Here's something I know. When I asked earlier what the problem with the world was, none of you immediately thought Rome. They're the worst, but they're no longer existing kingdom and they're funny hats. And they're still showing up in our movies like Gladiator. If we could just get rid of Rome, we'd fix the problem. But that's what all the disciples thought.
When Jesus showed up and he said he was going to set up a kingdom, they all thought, okay, he's going to overthrow the Romans. But the truth is, three, four hundred years later, if he'd have showed up, everybody would have thought he was going to attack something else. He was going to handle something else. If he showed up a hundred years later, they would have thought he was going to handle something else. If he showed up today, we'd say, hey, here are the issues. Attack these.
Advance your kingdom here. And if he shows up a hundred years later, the answer would be different. So he's going to zoom out. He's going to see much larger issues than we see. Roman Empire lasts like 400 years. Jesus has bigger fish to fry.
You see, he has a kingdom that advances against the domain of darkness. When it says that Jesus, he's delivered us from the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of his beloved son, what it's saying is that that's the war that is being waged. That Jesus is not advancing against the Romans because he's got much bigger enemies to deal with. Just like America could declare war on Russia and I can only declare war on Mr. Kirchstaffer, which now I'm thinking about it, I may need some allies, so we'll talk afterwards. You face enemies on your same level.
And so when they say, aren't you going to handle the Romans? It's not even on Jesus' radar for what his kingdom advances against. He's going to advance against the domain of darkness. So here's what's happened. When God created the world in the book of Genesis, he creates it, he says everything's good except for Adam shouldn't be alone, so he makes him a teammate to go through life together. He gives them both dominion, so he makes man and woman in the image of God and he gives them dominion over the earth and then he says that that's good, that he declares this good and right and then there's the creation that he has rebels against him and so that his good order fractures.
See, Satan shows up in the form of a snake in Genesis chapter 3 and he deceives Eve and her husband who was with her wasn't deceived but he joins in passively, lets her be deceived, watches and then just partakes in the rebellion understanding what he was getting himself into. Not fully, but he went tricked. And at that moment, God's good creation rebelled against him and there was a cosmic level brokenness and darkness enters into what was once light and good. And when Jesus comes back, when he shows up and he says he has a kingdom, he doesn't mean I'm here to overthrow the Romans, he means I'm here to reverse the effects of sin and brokenness in the world.
I'm here to advance against the domain of darkness that began with Satan, sin, and death. And can we agree that death is a bigger enemy than the Romans, than the Russians, than ISIS? Death's a bigger issue. Death wins, you just gotta wait a little while. So he says I'm gonna face a cosmic level enemy because there's cosmic level brokenness and this is I'm a cosmic level king, I'm an eternal king, so this is what I advance against.
So that's what Jesus comes to set up his kingdom against, that's what he comes to advance against. And here's the thing, so we would say, okay, hold on a second, hold on a second, so the world, we sinned, we rebelled against God, there was brokenness, Satan enters in their sin which just means that we no longer love Jesus like we ought to, we no longer love God, like they ought to, but they chose to make themselves God, they chose to care more about themselves than anything else and so we would say, well why doesn't God just get rid of evil? Like if he's God, if this is a cosmic level problem, we all agree there's something wrong with the world, why didn't he just fix that? Because he'd have to get rid of all of us because of the collateral damage at this point.
You see, when the United States gets into a conflict with a country like Iraq, or Afghanistan, which we've been over there hanging out for 10, 15 years now doing stuff, we have the capability to make that a black spot on Google Maps. Y'all understand that, right? Like the United States has the capability of creating craters where there used to be countries. we don't because of the collateral damage of the people who are a part of things that would get caught up in it. And so God could erase evil but he'd have to erase us because the truth is we've actually joined in the rebellion. We're selfish, we're greedy, we're a part of the problem.
Russ was very correct when he raised his hand and said he was. I am. We're a part of the rebellion and the brokenness, the sin that pervades the world. It's infected our souls. And so, God has an option, show up and destroy everything and get rid of evil. But he cares about us.
So what Jesus does is he comes to live a perfect life. So he doesn't rebel, he doesn't get infected, he doesn't join the domain of darkness but walks in light and then he dies in our place for our sins. So that he's headed to the cross and he's going to die so that darkness, our darkness can be put onto him and so that his light, righteousness can be given to us. So that our sin can be put onto him and so that his good things can be given to us. So that he who didn't deserve to die can die on behalf of those who do so that he can swap places with us.
He's advancing against the cosmic enemy which is sin. Ephesians 6 says this, it's a sister letter to Colossians. It says, For we do not wrestle and wrestle there just means hand-to-hand combat to the death. So it's not like WWE where they get to come back after they wrestle. It's like gladiatorial things where it's like, you lost, you don't exist anymore. Too bad.
So we don't wrestle, we don't have hand-to-hand combat to the death against flesh and blood which means our problems aren't worldly problems but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So that Jesus' kingdom advances against darkness wherever it shows up. And see, the thing is when we say that these are issues, when we name off ignorance, when we name off racism, when we name off all the things that cause problems in our world, those are just a part of how darkness shows up, how sin shows up and works itself out. But it's not the biggest level problem.
So, Jesus chooses to show up and handle the actual problem that we're facing. His kingdom advances not against the Romans but against darkness. He has a kingdom of light that advances against darkness. So, jumping to Matthew 4, we're going to look at Jesus walking around and doing some of the stuff that he does. and it helps make sense of a lot of what Jesus did while he was on earth. It helps clarify, at least for me, a lot of what Jesus is doing. So, what we've looked at is that Jesus has a cosmic kingdom that advances against a cosmic enemy, Satan's sin and death.
He came just for the sole purpose of going to the cross so that he could die and so that he could disarm, as Colossians says, that he disarms the rulers and authorities, putting them to open shame because he canceled the record of our debt. So, the enemy wants us caught up in this and he wants us to be destroyed. And Jesus pays for our sins so that he was destroyed on our behalf so that we don't have to be destroyed as we place faith in him. Here's what Jesus does, Matthew 4, 23, 25. We looked last week at verse 17 where it says Jesus showed up and from that time Jesus began to preach saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
So, he repents, he declares that the way we respond to the kingdom is repentance. Admitting that we're broken, admitting that we're wrong and we need him to show up and then he starts telling us what he did. And he went throughout all Galilee, this is verse 23, he went throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, that's where Jewish people gathered on Saturdays, not unlike this, what we're doing right now, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel, which means good news, the gospel of the kingdom. So, he's proclaiming, he's going around in Galilee, all this area, this area in Judea and he's proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, that he has a kingdom, that it is coming and that it is good news and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
So, his fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, which is spiritual enemies, epileptics and paralytics and he healed them and great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. So, Jesus walks around and I think most of us are familiar with this, Jesus walks around and he heals people, casts out demons, which the Bible is very okay with spiritual things. We're Westerners, we're not for the most part. Like maybe we like that show where they go around and they talk to ghosts or whatever, which I was watching that one time, they were in an ancient Chinese lair.
Chinese people have layers, tomb, I don't know what Chinese people have, but they were in one of these and they're walking around and they're looking for a ghost and they got like that little boom, boom, you know, ghost detector thing they have because they sell those, I think it's sharper image if you're looking for one, if you think you have a ghost in your closet or something, boom, boom, boom, and then this 2,000 year old Chinese ghost comes over and says, get out and they freak out and they run and you're like, oh my goodness, there's a ghost and then you're like, wait, that ghost spoke English. So that was weird. Like this Chinese guy, he's been dead for a long time so he's got time to read and he's like, I'm tired of all these Americans coming in and poking around, and I need to learn English so that I can freak him out because every time I whisper Chinese things, they're just like, what was that? So he learned English just to get rid of, but no, the Bible, we're not super okay with spiritual things but the Bible is.
Like this Chinese guy, he's been dead for a long time so he's got time to read and he's like, I'm tired of all these Americans coming in and poking around, and I need to learn English so that I can freak him out because every time I whisper Chinese things, they're just like, what was that? So he learned English just to get rid of, but no, the Bible, we're not super okay with spiritual things but the Bible is. The Bible is very clear that there are spiritual powers, spiritual things that we cannot see,
That there is an enemy on a cosmic level, that Satan is real, he was created by God, he is not as powerful as God, it's not a yin and yang thing but he is real, demons are real, the Bible is very clear about that, doesn't go into explaining a whole lot of how they work, what they do because the Bible is very focused on Jesus all the time and the Bible is very clear that Jesus has authority and power over these spiritual beings and at no point does the Bible get demon focused although they are there. So Jesus shows up though and he heals people and he casts out demons and he heals paralytics
And he lets blind people see again and I always just kind of thought this was like something he did on his way to the cross and it was just something he kind of, he did because he was God and he could and so while he was here he might as well heal people because it would be kind of rude not to because he can and so when people ask he should that's only, just good manners I always just kind of felt like it was that or maybe it was just he was going to show us that he was God and so like by healing someone
He shows us that he's God but I always felt like they were separate things I always felt like teaching, telling people about the gospel and healing people and even the spiritual warfare stuff which is what the stuff dealing with demons and stuff gets called a lot that they were separate things and that the kingdom was kind of somewhere over here but the truth is when Jesus heals somebody he's actually just pointing to the work that he's going to do on the cross when he casts out an evil spirit he's just pointing to the work that he's going to do
On the cross because all he's doing is advancing his kingdom against the domain of darkness which is sin and the effects of sin which is death and pain and brokenness and so when Jesus walks around on earth healing people when he walks around on earth meeting needs of those who are hungry and broken and outcasts when he walks around on earth welcoming people in who are isolated all he's doing is in every way advancing his kingdom against the bigger problem
Which is darkness pain sin Satan death so when Jesus raises someone from the dead it's not a parlor trick or just something to show that he's God it's actually what he's going to do on the cross which is reverse the effects of sin which bring about all these things so Jesus walks around doing this on earth and it's not separate from from the the kingdom
And it's not separate from his work on the cross so Jesus let me just this is helpful to understand Jesus when he goes to the cross inaugurates his kingdom when he walked around on earth he begins to proclaim that the kingdom's coming when he goes to the cross and he dies and then three days later rises again he inaugurates the kingdom which means that the kingdom exists now
And on that bumper video it said the kingdom is already but not yet that's a good way to say it the kingdom already is here but it's not yet fully consummated it's not yet fully rationalized realized pretty sure what I just said before that didn't make any sense but if it sounded good it did alright moving on that he inaugurated the kingdom it's already
But not yet but it's not fully yet realized which means that when he returns and destroys all of his enemies and welcomes those who've had their sin covered that at that point is when every tear will be wiped away from every eye there won't be pain brokenness sin anymore everything will be grace mercy love it'll be back to the way it's supposed to
So when Jesus walks around on earth and he heals somebody he's pointing to what he's going to do on the cross and he's pointing to how the kingdom's going to eventually work because there is no cancer in the fully consummated kingdom there is no brokenness death and pain in the kingdom and so he's saying when he tells somebody I'm healing you and the kingdom of God has come near he's saying this is what it's going to be like and this is what
I'm going to accomplish on the cross and that's that's how he advances against the actual enemy so he wasn't wasting time he was actually moving his kingdom forward every time he healed somebody every time he pushed the enemy back because he's advancing against the domain of darkness okay so chapter 5
Says that Jesus seeing the crowds he went up on a mountain and when he sat down his disciples came to him and then he says a bunch of stuff that we don't that seems the exact opposite of how we would understand the world to work so he says blessed are you who are hungry blessed are you who mourn blessed are you who are persecuted and it's like I thought blessed meant good stuff that sounds terrible
But what his point is is that his kingdom is working in an opposite way it's an upside down kingdom as opposed to the way we would think the world works that he didn't come to make everybody happy and whole now that he didn't come to fix everything now but he came to take care of our big problem which is that there is brokenness that there is pain in the world
And that it's caused by sin and he's saying blessed are you who are hungry now because you'll realize that there's brokenness pain and you'll turn and find me but verse 13 is what we're going to look at how we get to be involved in the kingdom you are the salt of the earth but if salt has lost its taste how shall its saltiness be restored it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown
Out and trampled under people's feet you are the light of the world okay who's the light of the world who's the light of the world you are okay who's he talking to disciples people listening to him followers of his who else does the bible say is the light of the world Jesus yeah we're in church
That's the correct answer to most everything Jesus okay so Jesus is the light of the world and says that he's the light of the world and then at this point he turns and looks at his followers and says you are the light of the world Jesus is the light of the world his followers are the light of the world that's a pretty
Amped up promotion for those who would follow Jesus so that's an important role if it's what he fulfills as well and then he says that his church that the people that follow him are this he says you are the light of the world a city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a stand
And it gives light to all in the house in the same way let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven okay Jesus' kingdom advances against the domain of
Darkness and then he looks at his followers and says you're the light of the world just right after he's walked around healed he's gathered big crowds and he's shown how the kingdom advances against darkness he then looks at his followers and says you're a part of this this is what you're supposed to do
This is what this is supposed to look like you're the light of the world we're advancing against darkness you know there's something great about light before we get into that God cheats just so y'all know when he gives illustrations when Jesus gives illustrations about who he is and what he did he created everything
We're going to look at some parables he gives next week about what he's like see when we're going to give an illustration about something we have to think okay I guess it's kind of like a tree and we have to think about what already exists but when God was creating things he got
To make it however he wanted to so when he says you're you're like light or I'm light or I advanced against darkness he already set up how darkness and light work so it's really not fair does that make sense like he created it so it gets to work how he wants it to work when God says that he's lighter that he advances against
Darkness do you know what's beautiful about that light never has a hard time getting rid of darkness it just doesn't he don't turn on a light in a room and it's got to take five minutes for it to push the darkness out of the room that's not how that works darkness is the absence of
Light so Jesus's kingdom advances against a domain of darkness and his followers are a city on a hill and the light of the world that we actually have because of Jesus the ability to advance against the domain of darkness when he says they're a city on a hill in that day when you needed something
A city was a great place to go it had walls and there was safety in a city there were certain cities that were actually cities that there were cities of refuge so if something was bad was going on or you did something bad you could actually run to the city and it was basically like home base so like you made it in the city like I can't get me I'm in the city you got to have a
Trial now you can't just kill me out there in the street and that was what they did so you went to the city to have fairness to have rule to have law to have protection if you needed something you went to a city because the city would have it and so what he says is that the church is a city on a hill that can't be hidden and that good works are to point to the father that people should see the
Church's good works and point to the father and give glory to our father in heaven so what Jesus says is that he's got a kingdom that advances against darkness in all forms and he's got a church that exists on the mission to advance that that we get to be a part of the same advancement against brokenness against pain against poverty against hunger against the enemy's work to bring about strife and pain and hurt that's what the church gets to do
And he empowers that and he accomplishes it but that's us so very practically how does that work what do we get to do what does that look like as we join Jesus on his mission I just want to cover a few things just to make just to make this this very practical so it's practical so we can understand what it looks like for us to join him to be a part of advancing the kingdom against darkness so we see that he heals people we see that Jesus so he meets
Physical needs we see at different times where Jesus feeds people so he meets physical needs that way as well he talks to his followers about being generous about giving things to people who are in need he also deals with spiritual ramifications of things so he addresses sin he addresses spiritual enemies so like we get to join in all of these things as the kingdom advances first thing we do real practical ways we pray the church gets to pray which
Is just us understanding that we don't accomplish this that we need God to show up that we need Jesus to be a part of moving this kingdom forward that if this is going to advance against the domain of darkness if we're going to push back darkness in West Columbia and Columbia we're going to push back darkness where we live we're going to need Jesus to show up so we pray we understand that it's what he accomplished on the cross for us that moves things forward anyway so we pray as the church we pray we give generously
Which means that as followers of Jesus we realize that he left his throne to give everything on our behalf to die in our place for our sins and so that everything we have is now held with an open hand it's his and it's whatever he wants us to use it for and the Bible says that that we've already been given everything in Christ and you know what that means it means you have nothing to gain you've already been given everything in Jesus and you have nothing to lose because you've already been getting everything in Jesus and so Christians are generous we give generously we open our wallets we
Write checks we help pay for things for people we give to local churches we give to missionaries we we give we pay for food we give generously if we own something it we share it we serve just means we give up our time our energy and our effort to push back darkness which means that it's Christians run soup kitchens do hospice care run clinics because Jesus did that because Jesus met physical needs that way because Jesus said that he didn't come to be served but to serve and so we get to join in the kingdom advancing as we push back the tangible effects of sin which is sickness and pain and hunger so Christians get to join in and advance the kingdom in a small way when we do these
Things we fight for relationships it's sin that tears up relationships every relationship you've ever had go poorly is due to sin and nothing else unforgiveness saying mean things to each other being too prideful to to communicate once something went poorly and so Christians know that Jesus overcame way more to have a relationship with us overcame everything and so we fight for relationships we're not okay with awkwardness just so you know that's a rule for Christians that's a rule here we're not okay with awkwardness not awkwardness like man that person makes conversations awkward because they breathe through their mouth not like that awkwardness like there's something weird between us and we're not
Going to talk about it awkwardness like they hurt my feelings but I'm not going to say anything we don't we don't that's that's not okay amongst Christians because we fight for relationships because Jesus gave us the ability to overcome it means that we fight for relationships with people who don't seem to have friends we befriend them because we know that Jesus went out of his way to befriend us who weren't very friendly he did not sit in heaven and say man that chad is one cool cat I want to get to know him he didn't he didn't say it about any of you either he overcame it for us and befriended us and cares about us because he's great so we fight for relationships we tell everyone about Jesus so it starts off by saying that he went around proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and that's what we do we tell everyone about Jesus we tell
Everyone about the hope and the life that can be found in him we tell everyone about how he's affected our hearts on a very real basis we tell everyone about the fact that we're messed up we can't fix this but Jesus came live the way we were supposed to died in our place he lived the way we were supposed to and died the way we were supposed to so that we don't have to die the way that we that we were supposed to and that we can have his way that he lived applied to our account we tell everyone about Jesus it is not an invitation we talked about last week it's not an invitation to come be amazing it's not an invitation to come have good morals it's not an invitation to come be really good behaviorers it's not it's an invitation that repentance is I'm messed up I need Jesus okay so we pray we give we serve we fight for relationships and we tell everyone about Jesus and you want to know
What's true we can do that anywhere we get to be a part of the kingdom anywhere I was having a conversation earlier this morning God wants Christians to be contractors and to stay contractors God wants Christians to be doctors and nurses and to stay doctors and nurses God wants Christian bus drivers Christian school teachers Christian plumbers there's no hierarchy in Christianity when it comes to following Jesus so it's not like foreign missionary Pope I don't know where you come from Pope foreign missionary bishop pastor Sunday school teacher deacon others who follow Jesus and read their Bible some others who don't read their Bible like it's not there's not like categories for it and God isn't like if you do this you're more special that's not how it works now there's supposed to be pastors and missionaries and they're supposed to be leaders in the church but they're supposed to be Christians who go to school forever
And then go do something else that they learn how to do they're supposed to be Christians who go to school to learn how to do something and then go do something that has nothing to do with what they learn how to do and they use that job to pay off their school debt and that's what because we can do this anywhere we can be a part of the kingdom anywhere you can do that at work you can pray for your co-workers say my boss is an idiot we'll pray for him most bosses are idiots pray for your heart while you pray for him see how you can so you pray you pray for your co-workers you pray that Jesus would show up that he would work in your in your place of work you can give this hey let me take you out to lunch hey I brought an extra honey bun in my lunch you want it people love carbohydrates give be generous you can give you can go out of your way to serve people when you hear hey I realize you're having car trouble can I can I help with that you
Can serve so if there's car trouble and you know how to fix it you can serve if you don't know how to fix it you can be like here's 10 bucks good luck is the gas tank on empty no I'm out of my expertise level here's $10 talk to a pro like you you can serve you can hey I've realized you're coming up on a deadline can I stay late and help you do that you can fight for relationships which means you show up early you stay late you talk to people and not just the people that are going to help you advance you can you can when you have the opportunity for someone who nobody else at work likes which every work has those people if if your work doesn't it might be you you can go out of your way to talk to those people to to share a time with them to say hey to them to ask them how they're doing you can fight for relationships at work and you can tell everyone about Jesus when you get the opportunity to share about Jesus when you get the opportunity to tell them about
What you have in Christ and the truth is if you're doing those other things you'll get opportunities and if you're doing those other things people won't mind listening to it because it won't be like hey I know I don't know you and I've never talked to you but here's this pamphlet or let me shout things at you it'll be no that's just who I am this affects how I exist in the world let me talk to you about Jesus you can do that at school you can pray pray for your the other students you can pray for your your instructors teachers professors you can give you can hey notice you miss class you don't copy my notes you can serve you can go out of your way to help people hey I'm doing pretty good in this section I don't mind helping I don't mind helping you study this hey I'm doing terrible in this section will you help me study this which isn't serving
But you may need to ask somebody that some point fight for relationships you can sit with the people that nobody sits with you can talk to people in class that nobody talks to you can do this anywhere and God wants us to do it everywhere that we are the light of the world which means that where you are God has you there on purpose some of you think my job is terrible and I want a different Job and God's holding on to your collar and saying nope I got something more important for you to do than just make money I got something more real and eternal and long lasting for you to do than just get a degree I got way better things for you to do than just play a sport I've got you here for a reason and we can do that everywhere you want to know what's
Beautiful about what we talked about last week that we approach the kingdom through repentance we're gonna be terrible at that there are gonna be days where we're the worst at it we don't pray we don't give we don't serve somebody tries to talk to us we're like hey shut up I'm not here to be your friend and then we get to repent and God doesn't love us more on the days that we get it right and he doesn't love us less on the days when we get it wrong we get to follow him in repentance Jesus has already accomplished everything on our behalf for those of us who placed our faith in him he's already done all of this for us and he's invited us into a cosmic level world-changing mission you see the disciples when Jesus rose from the dead and they look at him in
Acts chapter 1 and they say at this time you're gonna set up your kingdom you're gonna overthrow the Romans now and he says not now I've got a mission for you more people need to be invited in because at that point Jesus could have set up his kingdom and he would have saved all the people who knew him at that point and he would have destroyed everybody else and he hasn't done that yet because he wants all of us that know him to be everywhere infecting the world with the truth that we have in Jesus and spreading the kingdom band's gonna come up and play we're gonna sing and then we get to go be the church we get to go be a part of God's cosmic level mission we get to be a part of pushing back darkness by sharing food by praying for people by building relationships by serving people in tangible ways we get to be a part of
The kingdom advancing in our city every day and it's beautiful that everything that you do gets to have a level of intentionality to it now that you didn't understand or comprehend or or know or fully think about all the time we actually get to be a part of the kingdom advancing in our city when we go to work this week when we're having a random conversation with someone this week I'm gonna pray we're gonna sing God thank you that you did not solve the problem of the Romans I thank you that you showed up to handle a cosmic level brokenness in the world that you have a better vantage point than we do so that you address sin God I thank you that you've invited us into that that in your grace you didn't destroy evil and in your grace you're not coming back just yet so that we continue to to serve and love and advance your kingdom
In tangible ways and point people to Jesus we love you we thank you I pray that your Holy Spirit would empower us to be that to be a city on a hill to be a light in the world and God help us repent as we follow you we love you we praise you in Jesus name amen house and let's go 감사합니다 you you you you you you you
Prepare the Way
Transcript
Last week we looked at the fact that there's a problem when there are two kings. And so we saw how King Herod existed and some wise men showed up and said, Hey, we want to see the king. And he was like, here I am. That's not in the Bible. I'm just assuming that's how he responds when people say they want to see the king. He's like, kiss my ring, whatever the kings get to do.
And they were like, no, no, not you. Capital K King, the prophesied king, the king that was to come, the king that that has been promised by prophets, the king that's going to be an eternal king. And so Herod basically tries to get rid of Jesus. He tries to kill him unsuccessfully. Later, Jesus will die. And that was also unsuccessful because he didn't stay dead.
But he tries to kill him. And basically, we looked at our responses. We have the same options. We can, like the wise men, worship and submit to Jesus as king. Or we can, like King Herod, do everything we have to defend our own territory. And what we said was that kingdoms are militaristic, which means they advance at the expense of other kingdoms.
And so, like, I live in a neighborhood. If my property line expands, it expands at the expense of my neighbors. That's how it works. So if I walk into my neighbor's yard and I'm just like, yep, putting a hot tub here, my neighbor would be like, no, you're not. That's my yard. And I'd be like, that's my yard now because that's where my hot tub's going.
We just talked about this. Like, pay attention. And that's kind of how kingdoms work. Kingdoms could only expand at the expense of other kingdoms. And so when Jesus is standing in the Roman Empire and he says the kingdom is at hand, that's automatically a militaristic statement. And what we talked about a little bit last week is that we don't understand how kings and kingdoms work.
We just don't have a good grasp on that. And so we looked at some kings throughout history. And the way kings work is that they have rule and reign and they have absolute authority. That's very interesting to me to look back at just some earthly kings and the things that they got to do. King Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, he was a king in France. He built a palace at Versailles.
And this was like in France when they were wearing like knickers and like really awkward, uncomfortable clothes and stuff. And there's like pictures of him with like weird tight pants and like a giant fur thing hanging off of him. And so but what he did was he didn't like the sound of knocking. And so if you wanted to talk to him, you couldn't knock on his door. You had to use your left pinky finger fingernail to scratch. This is how you knocked on his door.
You scratched with your left pinky fingernail, which is just weird and arbitrary. But he gets to do that because he's a king. And so the people around him started growing that fingernail out longer so they could scratch better. And then you would scratch. This is a power play. You would scratch until he he let you in.
I look cool doing that. And that's what he's doing. He's just showing his power. They used to compete to see who would get to be the guy who would wipe sweat off of his face. It's like when he was out, like you was a good position to be King Louis XIV sweat wiper guy. That meant like he was showing you doing you a favor.
And he's just an earthly king. But that's how kings rule. They have authority and power and reign. And we don't get that. That doesn't fit into our American mindset where we're like, not no, heck no. Somebody going to sit here and make me wipe sweat and scratch on their door.
This is ridiculous. But that's how kings get to act. And so when Jesus shows up and says he's a king, what he means is that he has absolute authority. And so what we're going to look at is how do we respond to Jesus's kingship? If we are going to step off of the throne, if we are going to not like Herod fight for our throne, but we're going to be like the wise men and worship and surrender and step off of the throne. What does that mean?
How do we respond? And so we'll be in Matthew chapter 4, and then we're going to jump back to Matthew chapter 3. So, you know, just like you learned how to count 1, 2, 4, 3. We were in chapters 1 and 2 last week. We're going to be in 4 and then going back to 3. What we're going to look at, Matthew 4 verse 17, is what Jesus began, how he began his ministry.
So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to hop in and start looking at what the Bible says about how we respond to Jesus as king. God, we thank you. That we have the opportunity to gather together as church family and study your word. And we ask that your Holy Spirit would work in us to change us and to make us more like you. Help us to hear your word clearly today and help us to respond. Don't let us be cold towards it.
Don't allow us to hear your word and to walk away and to do nothing with it. And so we ask that your Holy Spirit would move and speak and change us. In Jesus' name, amen. Verse 17. So from that time Jesus, this is Jesus beginning his public ministry.
It says, from that time Jesus began to preach. He's proclaiming, saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And I think for most people in this room, we've heard something like that before. Or we've heard that said before. Or we've heard that kind of a statement before.
And I think for pretty much everyone in this room, we don't really know what that means. I know for me, like I hear that and I'm like, okay. All right, I don't know what to do with that. Like I don't know. I don't even really know what he's saying. So when he says, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
It's a lot like when they would send someone. Someone would go before a king. And we're going to look at that in a second. And basically it's, there's a kingdom coming. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. And you need to respond.
And so I think for us, we don't really get what repentance is. Repentance kind of has a bad rap. Like we don't really fully grasp what it means, what we're supposed to do with that. So maybe our best, when we think of this declaration, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, is like someone holding a sign that says repent. Like repent, the end is nigh. It's like, well, I don't know what nigh is, but that doesn't sound good.
Or like repent or you will perish. Like those kind of signs. Like I'm dirty and angry. Like they usually look like pretty unkempt. There's, my favorite is the like, repent, you specific person of this specific sin that I happen to be most angry about. So it'll be like, repent, you long-haired hippies.
And it's like, why, why just them? Like why, what you got against those guys? Or like they'll go repent at a specific type of people or a specific, and we just are like, okay, that sounds weird. It's like most of the time I think of repentance. Sometimes I'll think of it in, I'll either think of it in kind of the context I have in scripture, but any outside understanding of where I've seen this kind of declaration, I think of people like angrily shouting on a street corner. And so what we're going to do, if Jesus shows up and the first thing he says is repent for the kingdom's at hand.
Repent for the kingdom is here. I think we need to take some time this morning and figure out, okay, if that's how we respond to Jesus as king, if his kingdom's here and our response is repent, let's find out what repentance is. And so Matthew, who's writing this, doesn't explain much about that. He just says that Jesus declares that. Part of the reason he doesn't explain that is because he's kind of already explained it in chapter 3. And so that's how Jesus begins his ministry.
That's how he begins to declare what our response is. And we're going to jump back to chapter 3. So the beginning of chapter 3, if you've got one of the Bibles on the rows, it should be the same page. If you don't own a Bible, grab one of those and take it with you. That's our gift to you. So this is John the Baptist.
In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. I love John the Baptist. And we'll get to see why here in a minute, just from some different things. But he begins preaching in the wilderness.
That always just seemed kind of weird to me. Like someone rides into town and they're like, Hey, um, there's a guy. Like in the wilderness, like on my way in, he was yelling it. There wasn't a whole lot around. He was just yelling. Y'all want to go see what he's doing?
Seemed crazy. Could be fun. Like he's in the wilderness. And it really just kind of means not in the city. So like most people, when you had a message declared, you go to the city.
But he just stays out, kind of does his own thing. Luke's going to say that he wasn't a part of the religious establishment or the political establishment. He was his own thing. But he's in the wilderness declaring, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And so this is very similar as what he's declaring is it's when a king would come, when a kingdom was coming, it basically, they would send people ahead of them. And so they would show up to another castle or another kingdom.
And they'd say, Hey, uh, surrender. Cause Xerxes is coming. And he's on his tour day, butt kicking. And you can either be along that tour or you can surrender now before he gets here. So surrender because Xerxes is coming.
And so that's kind of what he's saying is John is declaring, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This kingdom is coming. And this is how you respond. You get to surrender now or you get to, to fight against this. And so it says for this is he talking about John the Baptist who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah. When he said the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
And I'm going to read that section of Isaiah to you really quick. It's an Isaiah 40. If you want to look it up later, I'm going to read verses three through five, just to give you the full extent of what it says when it's talking about John the Baptist, who he is. So in the wilderness, a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert, a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up. Every mountain and hill be made low.
The uneven ground shall become level in the rough places of plain and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. And all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. So it was prophesied beforehand that, that John the Baptist was going to come and declare this. And what he is declaring is a king is coming. We've got to get prepared. You see, when, when kings would travel to certain areas in their kingdom, so it's inside their kingdom, they travel to certain areas, people would go before them and they would prepare the road for them.
So most roads, the Romans had some roads, but when they went to certain areas in kingdoms, there just weren't, there weren't good roads. So there was basically paths that people had walked down or maybe enough horses had ridden down and maybe some carriages. And it just, there were a lot of places where it was, you just kind of winded through what was the most easy way to go. And sometimes it was over things and sometimes it'd be a path. And all of a sudden there was a giant rock. And so people who were walking are going to move the rock.
They're just going to move the path around the rock and go down the hill and up the hill. And so what someone would go ahead into the area and say, a king is coming. We've got to prepare the king's highway because when he comes, he's not going up and down and around. He's got an entourage. He's got his army with him and we need to, to prepare the king's highway. And so they would go ahead of them and say, okay, a rough place places have to be smoothed out.
Big rock stones, trees got to be out of the way. We've got to build a bridge here. We're not messing with this. When the king shows up, we're not messing with having to try to go through this Creek the way y'all go through it. We're building a bridge here. And they would prepare the way for the king.
And so the first thing that we see about repentance, when, when they show up and say, repent for the king, for the king is coming. The first thing we see about repentance is that we actively respond, to Jesus as king, that we actively acknowledge Jesus as king. That's the first step in repentance, because they would show up and say, the king is coming. You change to him. He doesn't change to you. Your ways, your thinking, your system, your setup changes to meet his, not his to meet yours.
And so the first thing about repentance, the first way that we respond to Jesus as king, is we actively acknowledge Jesus as king, which means he's in charge. He has rule and authority and reign. And so you'll hear people say things like, well, God loves me just the way I am. And I love me the way I am. And so God wouldn't show up and make me change, because he loves me the way I am. And the truth is, that's true.
God does love you just the way you are. That's made evident for us throughout scripture. That's what the gospel declares, that God loves us the way we are, but he loves us enough not to leave us there. And so you're making a false dichotomy, to say that God loves me so much, he would never ask me to change, doesn't make any sense. That's not actually how love works. So parents that love their kids don't say, okay, four-year-old, nope, what do you want to eat for dinner?
Candy. Sounds great. That'll be good for you. Do you want to go to sleep? Nope. Cool.
Do whatever you want. That's not love. That's easier. That's not love. Love is, no, you're not eating candy, because that's not good for you. You can have some at certain points when it makes sense.
But that's not your whole diet. And you do have to go to sleep, and you do have to wake up, and we are going to send you to school, even though you don't like it. And when you come home crying, because school's terrible, we'll talk to you about, yeah, it's terrible. You're going back tomorrow. That's love. That's how love works.
And so, to say that God loves me so much, He would never ask me to change, no, what you're saying is, God actually has this vague, fuzzy love towards me that isn't real. No, God loves you so much that He's going to ask you to change. That He's going to step in and take away the candy sometimes, because of what's actually ultimately good for you. See, I heard somebody say this the other day, and I thought it was a really good way to think about this. A lot of times, we think about following Jesus like getting a cat. So it's like, I'm going to follow Jesus, I'm going to be a Christian, I'm going to be a believer, and it's like getting a cat, which is just, my life needs a little bit of something.
It's pretty good. It just needs a little something, a little bit of some warmth and comfort. And so, like you get a cat, like it's going to sleep here, go to the bathroom here, not really do anything else here at all. And then when I've had a bad day, I'll hold it in my lap, and I'll pet it, and it'll make me feel better. And, and then when it, when I don't want to pet it anymore, I'll just toss it to the side, and it'll kind of, we'll coexist. And a lot of people think that's what following Jesus is like.
He'll just be a good addition to my already pretty nice life. And, and when I'm feeling bad, he'll comfort me. And when I need a little bit of warmth, he'll, he'll add that and spruce it up. And I'll, I'll be one of those Jesus people, you know, like, like a cat person. And that'll be good. And it'll help me.
And if, if he starts to get on my nerves, well, I just won't pet him that much anymore or whatever. But Jesus isn't a cat. He's a king. And kings don't coexist. Well, they don't just provide warmth when you want it. It's not how kings work.
So I want to be, because I think it is helpful. If you get to decide what applies, if you get to decide from here, what's real and what's not real and what Jesus means and doesn't mean, if when the Bible is really clear and specifically talks about areas of sin, and you get to say, well, that's not really something I'm going to do right now. Or yeah, I get that the Bible says that, but, but God doesn't really know my circumstances or, or yeah, finances were different. Or yeah, if I had a little more time, if you get to do that, Jesus isn't king. You are. If, if I get to tell Jesus where he can and cannot operate, if I get to tell Jesus what I will and will not do, then he's not king.
I am. And the truth is, who I'm following, worshiping, proclaiming, and saying that is my king and is my Lord is not Jesus. So if on a consistent enough basis, you get to tell God what he will not do, what he cannot do, then you can show up here as much as you want. And you can be in a community group every time that y'all meet, every time y'all have normal rhythms to hang out and share food. You can show up here. And when we're singing, little tears can drip out of your face, but you're not singing to Jesus because he's a king.
I don't know who you're here worshiping, who you're here proclaiming. I don't know who you're acting like you follow, but if he doesn't get to set boundaries, if he doesn't get to tell you when to go and when not to go, if he doesn't get to lead, it's not Jesus. The first thing that happens when we begin to follow Jesus is that we acknowledge him as a king and a king has ultimate authority. That's why it's a very helpful question when someone wants to follow Jesus to say, okay, someone says, I'm ready to be a Christian. Okay. Are you ready to do whatever Jesus tells you to do no matter what?
If he tells you to move, you're ready to move. If he tells you to quit your job, you're ready to quit your job. If he tells you to follow him here, you're ready to follow him there. Because Jesus is a king. Kings don't coexist well. So the first thing we see is that we acknowledge, we actively acknowledge Jesus is king and we change to meet him.
We change our ways to meet his ways. Verse four. Now, John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist and his food was locusts and wild honey. He wore a garment of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist. The reason they say this is because this is weird. People didn't do this.
And his food was locusts and wild honey. Trader Joe's doesn't have anything on that. Like you think you're, you're green or you're like, I mean, I'm pretty sure that's gluten free right there. He's eating crickets. I don't think there's gluten in those. Like he, the first organic, there you go.
You want to be a proof text right there. If you need to prove to someone that it's okay to be like organic and farmer's market. There you go. Say John the Baptist. It's like John. Uh, so anyway, or belt camel's hair, leather belt, uh, ate locusts and wild honey, lived in the wilderness, yelled at people.
I just, I like John the Baptist. He's great. He probably looked like one of the duck dynasty guys, but more, more Jewish, darker, uh, then, uh, then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him. So everybody starts leaving the cities to go out to hear what he's proclaiming. They were going out to him and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. So people would show up, they would go, they would hear him proclaim, repent for the King is coming.
You acknowledge him as King. And they would actually walk down into the river where he was. They would confess sin in front of people. They would say, this is where I'm off. This is where I'm broken. This is where I'm wrong.
This is where I need help. This is where I'm twisted. This is where I need a savior. And then he would baptize them as they confessed sin. And so the, it says that all these people are going out to them, confessing their sin. And when he saw many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, let me tell you who Pharisees and Sadducees are.
These are the religious elite. These were the respected Jewish leaders. These were the guys in chapter two, when the wise men show up and tell Herod, there's a King. These are the guys he calls in and says, Hey, y'all study the scripture. You know, these are the Bible trivia guys. Like these are the guys that when you were talking about something, they'd be like, actually Malachi says this.
Like they would, those were the, these were those guys. And these were the guys that you asked Bible questions to. These were the guys that were respected religious leaders. It says, when they came out to him, he said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Um, when we read scripture, there is some cultural distance between us and the people in, in the text. Um, so just to help us out, brood of vipers is, uh, would be considered a, um, what's a cut down, like a mean thing to say to someone.
I know you thought maybe that was like how they greeted each other. Brood of vipers. What's up? Like, no, uh, it was a mean thing. What he was actually pointing to was they understood when he said, you're the son, you're the children of snakes. But there's children of a snake.
What he's saying is, uh, you know, in the garden of Eden when everything was perfect and then a snake showed up and, and led Eve astray and Adam followed. Um, yeah, he's saying, he's saying that was Satan. He's saying you're Satan's children. Automatic bad team. They didn't appreciate this because there's a bunch of people. And then the religious respected elite show up to check things out, to maybe even be baptized.
And he says, you snake babies, you brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee? I love that. Because it means that repentance isn't about our behavior. Can't be. If he yells at these guys, it can't be about what I do.
These guys would have had the old Testament memorized at least the first five books. They brought Jewish children in. They would teach them the first five books. They would memorize it. And if they were good at that, then they got to keep going in school. So the first five books, you know, the books of the Bible that you have a hard time reading.
You know, the books of the Bible that we get to and we're like, all right, I'm going to read the whole Bible Bible reading plan, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, no book of John. I'm going to the book of John. They had it memorized. They were the religious elite. They behaved. They were moral.
They were upright. They looked up to them. And so what we would think, what we think repentance is, is come behave. Come be really good little boys and girls. Repent. Stop, stop being a bad person and start being a good person.
And if that were true, when the Pharisees showed up, he would have said, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And the Pharisees would have shown up and he would have said, be like them. Follow them. They're the best. That's not what he says. He says, brood of vipers, who warned you?
And the air was let out of the wilderness. You know how the air can be let out of a room? It was let out of the entire wilderness. And what he declared was, it's not about behavior or good morals. Or being a good little boy and a good little girl. It's about something deeper and more real.
And that's what he says. He said to them, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit. This is verse eight. Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father.
I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. You see, they thought they were good because of who they were. That's why he immediately says, look, they said, no, no, we're Jewish. We're the good guys.
We're the ones who behave. We're the ones who are more. We're the ones who know our Bibles. We're the children of Abraham. They thought they were good because of their lineage, because of their behavior, because they followed really well. They obeyed really well.
They kept the rules really well. And what he says is, God doesn't need you to behave. He doesn't need you to be a certain type of person, because he can raise up those people from rocks. He says, God can raise up children from Abraham, from these stones. And he says, even now the, the ax is laid to the root of the trees. You see, repentance is a root issue.
The first thing we do is we acknowledge that Jesus is King. And then we have to understand that repentance is a root issue. It's not a behavioral issue. The call is not come be good. Come behave. The call is come be systematically, systematically changed, irrevocably altered.
He says, it's a root problem. We spent some time talking about this when we talked in our, uh, idolatry series. And basically Martin Luther, who was a, uh, theologian in Germany, uh, one of the reformers. What he says is when he looked at the 10 commandments, he said that we don't break any of the other 10 commandments until we've broken the first one. The first of the 10 commandments is that you will have no other gods before me. God says I'm God and there are no other gods.
And Martin Luther looks at that and says, okay, we don't do any of the other things. We don't lie. We don't steal. We don't cheat. We don't, we don't defraud people. We don't murder people until we first decided that something is bigger and more important to us than God.
You see, a lot of times we get caught up in sin and we think that the issue is the sin. I lie a lot and I shouldn't lie. That's fruit. The problem is the root. If you have a tree and it has bad fruit, it's not the fruit's fault. It's the root's fault.
You don't buy a better fruit and staple it to the tree. You get a new tree. And so what he's saying is like, so we could both lie. You could lie and I could lie, or we could, we could both lie and we could be lying for completely different reasons. And we could, we could sit in our community groups and we could say, don't lie. It's bad to lie.
You shouldn't lie. But here's the thing. All we're going after is fruit there. We're not actually changing our heart. We're not actually changing the root of the issue. So let's say you're at your house.
Somebody calls you up. I'm like, Hey man. Hey girl. Hey friend. How about that? They're at your house.
They call up. Hey, I'm really needing some help with something. I'm kind of in a tight spot. Are you doing anything? Can you come help me? And you are watching television.
And so you say, because you follow really well, you say, yeah, I've really got some stuff going on. I've got some plans. I'd love to help, but I can't. My schedule is swamped. And you're, you do have plans. Sitting on the couch.
Schedule is swamped. These shows aren't going to marathon themselves. Um, and so you lie and, and you can say, I shouldn't lie. But the truth is you're lying to defend your comfort. But let's say you're in your community group.
You're hanging out with your community group and people are confessing sin and they're talking about how they need to change. And you're just kind of sitting there. Sometimes you get to where it's like, this person's going to talk about where they need to change, where they need to repent, where they need Jesus, where they need the gospel. And it comes to you and you say, yeah, you know, I just, I've been having a hard time reading my Bible lately. And I used to read five chapters and now every day I only read like two. And I just need you all to pray for me.
That may be true. But in this particular situation, you also have a current issue with pornography. But you don't want to talk about that. And you're, you're lying, but you're lying to defend the approval of the people in the group with you. And so we can stand up here and talk about, and they could stand up and say, repent, behave really well, and go after, don't lie, be a good person. But the problem is, your root doesn't change.
So we could talk up here and you could decide, oh, well, if I'm going to be a good Christian, then I need to, to have the approval of all these other Christians and I need to be open about my sin. And so really all you're doing is continuing to worship. Approval is just in a different area. And so John the Baptist shows up and says, this is a root problem. the goal isn't to be really good. The goal is to have your heart changed. So one of the ways to tell us is if we get caught in sin, somebody knows about sin, are we frustrated that they know?
Are we, do we feel bad because people now know about the problem? Or do we feel bad? Do we feel guilty? Do we feel conviction because they're sin and we're broken over sin? Or is it just that people know now? Is it just a problem because, oh, now I got to talk to people about this?
Or is it actually heart level change towards Jesus? You see, they, they behaved really well, but that, that doesn't help. Because their heart didn't love God. it loved a lot of other things. People thinking they were great. People thinking they were smart. Being the best at stuff.
Behaving really well. Putting God in their debt. You know where this shows up? We do a lot of the, um, come to Jesus and he'll make everything great. If you follow Jesus, then your kids will be great little kids. Or if you follow Jesus, then your business will work out.
Then your finances will be good. And so there's some people who, who hop into the church because they're making a deal with Jesus. They're contracting him out. I'll hold up my end of the bargain. I'll behave. I'll be moral.
I'll do good things. I'll vote the right way. Whatever that means. As long as you hold up your end of the bargain. That's why you have a lot of people in the church really mad at God because he's not living up to the promises that he never made. They've just contracted him out.
Their heart doesn't love Jesus. They're not in awe of a God who would step in and rescue them. They haven't changed the route. They're just trying to contract Jesus out. And that's what they were doing. We'll behave.
We'll be good. We'll do these things. And then when God, you show up, you have to love us because we behaved so well. So some people were like, I burned all my bad CDs. I quit going to R rating movies. How could this happen?
I've been showing up every time there was a Sunday thing. And I even started going to that little group. They talk about all the time. And now this is going on. And we're frustrated with God because we contracted him out through our behavior. I'll be good.
And then you pay up. I'll be good. And then everything else gets to be smooth. And John the Baptist looks at those guys and said, brood of vipers. Who warned you to flee? So they needed to repent of their good works.
So they were using to put God in debt. And they needed to change root level, heart level change. Then it gets good. He says this. We're going to jump back up. Verse eight.
Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root. And every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So what he says is bear fruit in keeping with repentance.
Not bear fruit and that leads to repentance. Not bear fruit, do good things, have good behaviors. And that is repentance. What he says is bear fruit in keeping with it. So when we repent, when we change the root, we have different fruit.
So like in my backyard, I've got like cherry trees that aren't like good cherry trees. They just drop little red things all over my yard. And that's the kind of the fruit that they have. And if I want an apple tree, I plant an apple tree. I don't try to change this cherry tree. Cut out the roots, put a new one in.
And here's what he's saying. He's saying that repentance leads to joy. That root change leads to a fruit change. That's the third thing we're looking at when it has to do with repentance. And it rhymes, so you know it's really important. Root change leads to fruit change.
And so basically, we so often think that God wants good fruit from us, and we work really hard to behave. We work really hard to keep it together. But the root hadn't changed. And here's how fruit works. There is joy in fruit. It's a process.
Cutting out the root is hard. It's difficult. It's painful. Repentance is not easy. But there's joy in fruit.
We don't understand fruit. They use fruit as an example a lot. We don't really get it, because if my involvement with fruit is like, I want an apple, so I go buy them. Like how I pick fruit is I get one of those plastic bags. I'm going to go pick some fruit. And it's super easy.
Like I can get apples all the time. I have no clue when apple season is, because I can always get apples. So I'm pretty sure always is apple season. I know when watermelon comes in, because you can't always get watermelon. But we don't get fruit.
And so like my dad, he plants fruit trees. I was at his house, and he was showing me his fruit trees, and he was like, look at this, look at this, look at my pear tree. See, it's got pears coming in. And I'm like, those don't look like pears. Y'all aren't going to eat those, are you? Like that's not.
And he's super excited, because fruit takes a long time. And you get excited when fruit shows up. See, root change is difficult, it's painful, it's hard, and then you celebrate when fruit shows up. There's joy when fruit shows up. And here's the thing. You have two options when it comes to hanging out with a church family.
You can pretend, because we don't get to see root. Shows up every once in a while, but we don't get to see root. Root doesn't show up on a regular basis. Fruit does. So you can go to the store, you can fabricate what fruit should look like, and you can staple it to your tree, and you can maintain that for a little while.
Or you can go through the process of having your heart level, deep level, root change, and then fruit will come. Because root change leads to fruit. That's how it works. And let me tell you something, if you're in here, and your heart hasn't been changed to love Jesus, if you haven't had a root change, keeping up fruit is unbearable. And very, very difficult. But if your heart's been changed towards Jesus, it's a natural thing that happens.
That we begin to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. So some of you are saying, I love Jesus. Deep heart level, I want Jesus. Let me tell you something, growth is coming. The Bible says we're predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, which means you're going to slowly look more like Jesus. And so for some of us, you just need encouragement to know that growth is coming.
That the fruit's going to look weird and odd, and you probably shouldn't eat it at first. And then it's going to continue to grow and continue to come, and you're going to continue to look more and more like Jesus. And for the people in this room that are just pretending, just hanging out, just trying to behave, just being really moral to get God on your team, you're going to wear yourself out, and you can't keep that up. So repentance is acknowledging Jesus as King. It's having a root level change. And then fruit comes.
Root change leads to us bearing fruit, which means we actually do begin to obey. We actually do begin to love things that we didn't used to love. We actually do want to read Scripture. When before you became a believer, you had no desire to do that. We actually do want to confess and repent of sin. We actually do find joy in that.
We actually do want to be with church family. We actually do want to show up early in the morning to hang out because we've been changed. We enjoy being around these people. Fruit is beginning to come, and it's not anything that we're working at or doing. So here's what he says.
This is how this is beautiful. Verse 11. I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I. He's talking about Jesus. Whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
What he's referring to there is that you will be changed by Jesus, by the Holy Spirit. You will be a believer, and the Holy Spirit of God will come rescue you and change you, or you will go to hell. That is what he is saying. He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear the threshing floor. That's where they would have wheat.
And gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. The picture there is that wheat has chaff, and wheat is heavier than chaff. And so you would take a big fork and toss it in the air, and the chaff would blow away, and the wheat would stay. And you would sit there and do this. And then you would burn the chaff, and you would keep the wheat. And what he says is, Jesus the King is showing up, and that's what he's going to do.
He's going to keep the wheat and burn the chaff. And they're all together, and he knows the difference. That's what he says. And here's how this is beautiful and wonderful. So you look at this, and you say, well, repentance sounds hard and terrible.
And yeah, I get the fruit thing, but that's far off. And how do I get to this root issue? How do I change my heart? He baptizes with the Holy Spirit. He changes your heart. You see, John the Baptist did something really weird.
He baptized people. And that was really weird. We've got a baptism coming up, and we're doing this because John the Baptist did this. And because Jesus, after John the Baptist, did this. But he baptized people.
And here's why this is really weird. That's why he's called the Baptist, by the way, because he baptized people. It would be the same as calling him like John the Baptizer. He wasn't like denominationally affiliated, just so you know. They had baptism, but here's how baptism worked. I'm Jewish.
You're a Gentile. You want to be Jewish. You want to get in on the right stuff. You want to start following well. Here's what you get to do. You get to step into a river, and you get to wash yourself, signifying that you're cleaning yourself up, you're making yourself nice, and now you can come join the right team.
And here's what John the Baptist did. It wasn't just for Gentiles. It was for everybody. So Pharisees were invited to be baptized, and Jews were invited to be baptized, and Gentiles were invited to be baptized, and he baptized because he was signifying, you're not cleaning yourself up. You need someone else to step into this situation and to accomplish this for you. And he said he's coming, and he's going to baptize with the Holy Spirit.
He's not just going to signify. He's actually going to do it. He's going to change you fundamentally. You see, John the Baptist was pointing that you needed help. You needed someone to step into your situation and clean you up for you because you were never going to accomplish it. And if you were religious and moral and good behavior, you needed to repent.
And if you were a sinner and you were out, you were an outcast, you were pushed to the side, you needed to repent. Everybody needs to repent and have Jesus wash you. You see, Jesus stepped on the earth, and he lived a perfect, sinless life as a king, and then instead of headed to a throne, instead of setting up his eternal reign like they thought he was going to, he died on a cross. And we actually as believers are washed by his blood. We are changed by his blood that was shed for us. You see, what he did was he took our sin, he took our religion, he took all the things that we've tried to put him in our debt and all the things we've tried to use to run from him, and he died for them.
He was crucified for them. And that as believers, when we're baptized, what we're saying is, I was buried with Christ, just like he was dead and buried, and I was raised again up by him, not by me. I've been washed clean by him, not by me, that my sin died with him, and that I've been risen, and I've given new life and righteousness by him, that Jesus swapped places with me. You see, the call isn't come be good. It's come have Jesus change you. It's not come behave, it's come be changed, have the root changed by Jesus.
You can never accomplish this, you can never work it out on your own, Jesus can, and only Jesus can. That's what repentance is. And that's why there's joy there, and hope there, and life there, because it's not about our ability to be good at it. Because it's about what Jesus has already done on our behalf. That we acknowledge him as king, and then we have him change us fundamentally. You see, there were people that, in their understanding, couldn't be forgiven.
They were out. They'd already failed, they'd already messed up, and the only way they could be back, was to be good again, to work really hard, to change their ways, and some of them were just out, like there's no way back in for you. And that's why all of Judea, and Jerusalem came out to him, because he was proclaiming, everybody can be welcomed back in. That's why repentance is really good news. If there is no forgiveness, there is no repentance. So what he's saying is, it'd be like if you ran away from home, or strung out on drugs, and somebody came to you and said, hey man, I was at your house the other day, and I talked to your dad.
And he said he wants you back. And you don't have to pay him back. You don't have to clean yourself up, and get a job, and get off drugs, and show back up respectably. He just wants you back now. In debt, broken, messed up, and in need of a whole lot of help. That's good news.
That you're welcomed back now. Most of us feel like, we've got to clean ourselves up, work really hard, and show up in a respectable manner, so that God would welcome us. And those are the guys, that he calls brood of snakes. We've got a lot of weddings coming up, in our church. A good bit of them. And I'm pretty excited, I like weddings.
I get to do premarital counseling, which is a lot of fun. Because you just get to talk to people, get to know people, get to ask questions, get in their business, annoy them. It's great. One of the things we talk about, in premarital counseling is, we're going to try to have a whole lot, of really awkward conversations now, so that they're less awkward later, when you're married. So we're going to talk about, how to argue, we're going to talk about finances, we're going to talk about sex, and the next time, y'all have to have a big in-depth conversation, about finances or sex, you'll think, at least Chet's not here, and we're not sitting, at a waffle house.
It's just, all together feels better, as a way to have a conversation. And so, but I'm really excited about it, and here's what I know to be true. At a wedding, so we'll stand up, we'll be at a wedding, and there'll be groom, and bride, and they'll be like decked out, and looking, looking nice, and like sweating, and freaking out, and they have no clue what's going on. And so, they put all this work, and effort into making this wedding really nice, and then remember zero of it, because they're freaking out, and like hyperventilating and stuff. But here's what I know is true.
I got to do, my brother's wedding, Logan and Elise, are in my community group. I got to do their wedding in January, and no one, no one was sitting there, while we were performing the wedding, and going, look at how great, a husband, Logan is. Look at him, crushing that husbanding. Nobody was doing that. He was in the process of getting married. Nobody was looking at him, and going, look, he's wearing a suit.
Check. He's repeating those things, that that preacher says. He's crushing this husband thing. Nobody's doing that. Because that's not the test of a good husband. I wish it was.
That'd be sweet. Can you put on pants? Yes. Can you repeat after me? Yes. Word for word?
Almost. That's not the test of a good husband. A good husband is lifetime, devotion, work, effort, repentance, messing up, admitting that you messed up, messing up again, waiting longer, then admitting that you messed up again. That's what, that's what a good husband is. A husband is proven, not in an hour of cleaning themselves up, and repeating after somebody, but it's proven over the course of time. As they prove that they love, as they prove that they serve, as they, you get to see, does this guy love his wife, by his actions over time?
And so the truth is, in Christianity, what he's saying is that your heart will be changed by Jesus as you repent. The root will be changed. It's not your ability to clean yourself up and to repeat some words. That's not how it works. That's not what following Jesus is about. That's not, that's not how this operates.
It's you continually following as you're changed, as you love. It's not your ability to be dutiful. So no, no husband on their 25th anniversary, like shows up with flowers and it's like, honey, 25 years ago today, I repeated words. And I signed something that's kept at the courthouse. And so I've stayed married to you because I signed something that's kept at the courthouse. And I've tried to be a good husband because divorce is bad.
And I bought you flowers because husbands are supposed to do that every once in a while. And I guarantee that 25 years from now, I'll still be holding up my end of the bargain. You're welcome. There's not a female in this room who just got teary eyed. And some of us are acting like that's how we follow Jesus. Jesus, I read your rules and I've been sticking to them.
And I'm going to keep sticking to them because I'm supposed to. And that's good. You're welcome. No. That's not how it works. That's not what we're called to.
That's not how the Holy Spirit changes you. That's not what marriage looks like. Marriage is love. I did the right things. I stuck around when it was terrible because I love. Because I care about you.
Because I'm willing to fight for this. These 25 years, we've been married for 25 years. Eight good ones. And I'm here. And I'm going to be here. Because I've been changed by you.
I love you. I'm going to be here. I'm going to do for you. I'm going to work for you. I'm going to serve. I'm going to do.
And that's what he's saying, that you have a heart level, root level change, that you love Jesus. And you're like, this is difficult. And this is hard. And you're king. And I'm going to follow. And I'm going to be here.
Because you've changed me. Because you died for me. Because you've rescued me when I didn't deserve it. Because repentance is your grace that I can be forgiven. That I'm not out. And I'm not too far gone.
I'm not too broken. And that's what the call is to follow Jesus as king. He shows up and he doesn't coexist well, but he loves greatly. And he died to rescue us and to make us his. And that means we change. Because he changes us.
Because on our good days and on our bad days, he paid for our sin. Period. Period. And it's not about our ability to behave or to be good. It's about what he's done for us. And the invitation is for everyone to repent.
Band's going to come back up here and here's what we're going to do. We're going to do something differently from what we've done in the past than what we do on a regular basis. The invitation always, as we follow Jesus, is an invitation to repentance. It's an invitation to see where Jesus is king and where we're not following well and to change. To acknowledge that we're broken, to acknowledge that we're messed up and that we need him. And so we always have opportunities for repentance.
We gather together in our community groups for repentance. But specifically today, John the Baptist and Jesus both begin by declaring, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus is a king and he does have a kingdom and our response is repentance. Which is acknowledging that he's king. Acknowledging, confessing sin where we're broken and where we're off and knowing that we get to because of what he's already done. That he has died for us and that he will change us at a root level.
He won't just help you behave, he'll change your heart. And so the people in this passage came from their cities and they would stand on the bank of the Jordan and then it says they would come down into the water and they would confess sin and they would be baptized. And they were overjoyed at the fact that they were welcomed in. See, they thought they were out. They thought there was no way they could be good enough. Some of them were overjoyed that they'd been working really hard to prove themselves and they didn't have to.
That it wasn't about their ability to clean themselves up. So here's what we're going to do today that's different than what we usually do. We're actually going to, as we sing this last song, you're going to come out from your chair and you're going to come here and you're going to confess sin and talk to Jesus. So we've got a baptism coming up, Raz mentioned it earlier, we've got a baptism coming up October 19th which is where we're going to get together and celebrate that repentance is still offered to us and that Jesus died on our behalf and that we can have life and hope and joy in him. That he'll change our root and that we'll begin to bear fruit and begin to grow and begin to have joy as we follow him.
But see, they would walk down into the water and they would confess sin and I want to offer us the same opportunity to come down. If you come out from behind your chair and you walk up here, everyone in this room will know that you're a sinner and everyone in this room is a sinner who needs Jesus and we will celebrate that Jesus still saves, that he still rescues, that he still changes hearts, that it's not about our work or our effort or our goodness, it's not our ability to stick, our ability to be great and that we're not too far gone. So as we sing this next song, the invitation is to do exactly what they did over 2,000 years ago, which was to walk down and confess, I need Jesus. I'm a sinner.
I need help. I need to be welcomed back in. The invitation is repent for the kingdom is at hand. There is a king and he is good and he did give up his throne to go to a cross so that we could be welcomed in. So that's what we're going to do.
Maybe some Christians in this room and you need to confess, you need to repent, you need to talk to Jesus. There may be some people in this room who've been pretending, you've been working really hard, you've been taking all the time and effort it takes to staple fruit to a tree. You need to ask Jesus to change your heart. And then, on October 19th, we'll do exactly what they did and we'll baptize and celebrate that Jesus is alive and that he saves and that he works and that he does his will and that he changes us. So y'all stand.
Let's sing. And don't fight it. You need to come confess, you need to come repent. It's open. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. We are invited in.
God, we thank you for your grace. We ask you that your Holy Spirit would move, that you would continue to change us, to draw us to yourself. God, that you would keep us as you change our hearts, pull us towards you. Lead us all into repentance, God, as we respond to you as king. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
The Problem of Two Kings
Transcript
Good morning. How are you doing this morning? This side's doing good. Not hitting on much over here. My name is Chet Phillips. Excited to be hanging out with y'all this morning.
We're going to be in Matthew chapter 1. So if you've got a Bible, go to Matthew chapter 1. There should be some sitting on the rows. You've got some over there if you need one. And if you don't own a Bible, grab one of the ones on the rows or grab one of the ones on the table. And that's our gift to you.
Just snatch that on your way out. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 1. We're going to spend the next couple of weeks talking about Jesus as King and His kingdom. And so we've got to do a little bit of background work for us today to kind of set this, frame it up in our brains so that we can think about it correctly. So what happens is if you begin reading the Gospels, which are the accounts of what Jesus did while He was on earth, they're going to usually start, a couple of them are going to start with John the Baptist.
And John the Baptist is going to come before Jesus and he's going to begin to proclaim. They're going to say that he proclaimed, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then it's going to say that Jesus shows up and he begins to say the same thing. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And that sounds nice, but what are they talking about? Like what is the kingdom of heaven?
What do they mean by the kingdom of God? As Jesus goes through and He tells these parables, which are just confusing, illustrational stories. And so He tells parables about the kingdom and He's going to explain. Here's what the kingdom looks like. And He's going to do this over and over again. And so we're going to spend the next few weeks as we go through September and into October talking about the kingdom and unpacking what it is, how it works, how Jesus is a king, and what that means for everybody in this room and really everybody on this planet.
And so in order to do that, we've got to do a little bit of background work because we're ignorant, which just means we don't know. So it doesn't mean that you're dumb. So my dad used to, when I was growing up, he wouldn't call me dumb. He would just call me ignorant. And he said, ignorant. He'd be like, you ignorant boy.
And he was like, that's not offensive. You just need to learn things because you don't understand how stuff works. And so we're ignorant as far as how a king works. We just are. Like we base it off of maybe some books we've read, maybe some of our history classes that we had in school. So like maybe when you think of a king, you're going to think of King Arthur.
And he had like a round table. And he had some knights with him. And when you think of King Arthur, you maybe are going to think about a couple of different movies. Maybe Sean Connery is going to pop up in your head. Or you're going to think about the quest for the Holy Grail, which is a really bad understanding of who King Arthur is and what Camelot was like and all that kind of stuff. So we just, we don't get kings.
We don't. A good example of this is I was talking to Raz. He's one of our group leaders in our church. And he's from Australia. And I didn't know this. Australia still kind of fits under the Queen of England.
Did y'all know that? Like I didn't know that. The Queen of England can go to Australia and fire their elected officials. Just kick them out. Because she's the Queen of England. That's why.
That's why she gets to do that. And so I was like, wait, what? So like she actually showed up in I think the late 80s, early 90s and fired their prime minister and parliament. It was just like y'all are out. Or maybe it was just the prime minister and all the people around him. And then basically said y'all have to hold a new election.
And so immediately when he said that, like that was, that affronted my sensibilities as an American. Because it was like who on earth is going to travel over an ocean and tell us what to do with our government. So it was like immediately was like no, no sir. And so I was asking him more questions about it. I asked him. I said okay, do y'all pay taxes to Australia?
I mean to England. Does Australia pay taxes to England? And he said no, we don't pay taxes. And I said you're welcome. They learned their lesson on that one. Just when you see an American and you think about the fact that you don't pay taxes to England, just shake their hand.
Tell them thank you. But we don't get it. We don't understand how kings and kingdoms work. We just, as Americans, we don't have a place for that in our head. We don't have a place for the authority. A good example of this is how much we freak out about presidential elections.
I mean America loses it over presidential elections. We will elect a president two years from now in 2016. And they're already talking about it. They were talking about it when Obama got elected. They started talking about the next election. I heard a conversation recently.
They were talking about Hillary Clinton. And they were saying should she line herself up with Obama? Should she separate herself from Obama? And they're going into statistics of when and how the parties flop back and forth and who's going to be president. And that person is going to be president for four years in a limited government. They can't just do what they want to.
President Obama can't just walk out tomorrow and say here's how America's running from now on. No. There's Supreme Court. There's people that decide on laws. He's got to take things through Congress. Like he has a very limited position and we feel like the president has too much power sometimes.
We hadn't even begun to scratch the surface of what a king looks like. So for us to understand as we read through scripture and Jesus shows up and says he's a king and that he has a kingdom. We got to know what that means. We got to understand what he's declaring how they would have heard it because we don't hear that right. It's like, oh, you own a castle? You got a moat?
That's cool. I'd like a moat, but I don't want to have to like cut the grass around it all the time. Like we don't, it doesn't hit us right. We don't understand. So let me explain just a little bit.
We're just going to do a little bit about how kings work and how they would have understood how kings work. So a kingdom is the extent of the rule and the reign of a king. So you have a king. The king has a kingdom. So wherever his rule and reign exists, that's his kingdom.
And he can have that kingdom. You can have a kingdom as long as you can defend it and rule over it. So you can have a kingdom as long as you're able to protect it. And so throughout history, kingdoms have just swallowed up other kingdoms. So President Obama recently with this whole Russia-Ukraine thing, he said you can't, he said we know that you can't redraw borders at the edge of a gun.
So the countries that we have have pretty much been the countries that we have for quite a while. That's not how history works. In response to that, it's actually, no, actually you can. You can redraw borders at the edge of a sword or the edge of a spear or on top of a chariot or at the edge of a gun because that's how borders get redrawn throughout history. So we've been in the United States for a while and we don't have to fight with Mexico all the time about our border.
We did, but we don't anymore. And pretty much now we buy things from people. But that's not how it worked in world history, in human history. It was you had a kingdom and your kingdom was your kingdom until a bigger, badder kingdom came along. And then they just owned you. So kingdom shows up.
We have a kingdom. Kingdom shows up. We get to decide, okay, they're coming at us. Can we defend ourselves? If we fight, can we stop them? So we sit there and we talk about it.
We look and we say, no, if we fight, we will all die. Okay. We'll call that plan B. Plan A will be, let's have a convo. Let's talk to these guys.
See how they're doing, what they want. And so that's pretty much what kingdoms would do. You would fight and defend your kingdom. If you could rule over it, you could. If a new kingdom showed up and they were badder than you, you could fight and die. Or you could surrender and pay taxes and then their kingdom ruled over you.
So throughout history we see Egypt had a kingdom. That's what we showed up there a second ago. Israel goes in and kicks out a bunch of these smaller kingdoms and becomes one kingdom. And then Assyria swallows that kingdom. And then Babylon swallows that kingdom. And then Greece comes up and swallows that kingdom.
And then Rome swallows that kingdom. And it was just who was the baddest? Got to have a kingdom. So whenever we hear kingdom declared. When Jesus says, I have a kingdom. It's automatically going to hit the ears of those listening to him as a militaristic declaration.
Kingdom advances against another kingdom. That's just how they work. Let me tell you how kings work. They're in charge. Period. Throughout history, that's how kings work.
So some of you are like, I'm the king of my own castle. No, you're not. Because your wife is in charge. She may let you pretend. But kings were in charge.
They were in charge. Period. They were in charge of how everything played out. So a king could just make a declarative statement. And that's what happened. And so we see throughout scripture.
I'll just give you some examples. Okay. So there was a guy named Xerxes. He shows up in scripture in the book of Esther. Xerxes. In Esther, he's called Ahasuerus.
Which was his Aramaic name. But Xerxes is his Greek name. So that's how we know him from history. But his name was Xerxes. He had a throne that was ginormous. And he used to sit on his throne.
And his throne had a big red carpet on it. If you sat on his throne, you died. If you touched the carpet that his throne was on, you died. So it was like throne, no touching. Carpet, buffer zone for the throne, no touching. He had 10,000 soldiers called immortals that surrounded his throne.
When they went into battle, they carried his throne. He sat on it. His immortals sat around him. And then his army won. And he just got to watch. That's Xerxes.
Did what he wanted. All the time. There's a guy in the book of Kings. His name is Aboni Bezek. Or Aboni Bezek. Ann and I just found out that we're going to be having a baby.
And so I'm throwing that name in the hat. Aboni Bezek. That's a heck of a name. But anyway, this guy was in smaller kingdoms. He had captured 70 kings. In the book of Judges, he had captured 70 kings.
And he cut off their thumbs and their big toe. Which, just so you know, you need your big toe to walk around. Like, it's important. So it makes it hard to walk. So they didn't have big toes and they didn't have thumbs.
The reason humans are in control of the world is because we have big brains and opposable thumbs. These are important. If you've ever had, like, a hurt thumb, it makes it really difficult to do anything. He had 70 kings that he'd cut off their thumbs and their big toes. And their job was to sit around his table and pick up crumbs with these two fingers. So they walked.
And when he was done eating, 70 kings picked up crumbs around his table to show his dominance. Because he's a king and he does what he wants. And the truth is, like, 70 of them, but they're not holding an uprising. Because it would be like this awkward standing slap fight that they would lose really quickly. You slap them and they just push you down. They'd be like, now pick up the crumbs.
They'd be like, okay. Somebody help me up. There's a King Nebuchadnezzar. I love this story. There's a King Nebuchadnezzar. This is in the book of Daniel.
He's a Babylonian king. He has a dream that freaks him out. And when you're a king and you have a dream that freaks you out, you get to call on people to help you with your dream. When you're you and you have a dream that freaks you out, you get to tell your co-worker and they get to think you're weird. But when you're a king...
Man, I dreamed I was a clown last night. Dude, I don't want to talk about your dreams. Like, we're at work. When you're a king, though, he said he has this dream and he calls all of his advisors and wise men in to answer questions and his sorcerers and stuff. And he says, I had a dream. It freaked me out.
I want you to tell me what the interpretation is. And so they say, okay. Tell us the dream. We'll tell you what the interpretation is. And he says, no. If I tell you the dream, you'll make up an interpretation.
And I won't know if you're telling the truth. You tell me the dream and then tell me its interpretation. And they say, we can't do that. And he says, cool. Kill all of them. Because he's a king.
And kings do what they want. There are no re-elections. There are no runoffs. There is no impeachment. The way you get rid of a king is to kill him or to have a bigger kingdom that takes over his. That's it.
Otherwise, they're king forever. So we're freaking out that we're going to have a president for four years. And he's going to have a limited amount of power in our government. This king was king because he was born a lot of times. Or because he got an army and was really powerful. That's pretty much how it works.
So when Jesus declares that he's a king and when the Bible declares that he has a kingdom, it means something that we wouldn't hear. It means something to the people who were first listening that we don't get. It's like, okay, complete authority. Power. The ability to say, and it happens. It goes.
What you say is law and rule and final. And that your kingdom advances in a militaristic way. So that's how kingdoms work. So if you have a good king, you have a good kingdom. A generous king. A gracious king.
A king that fights on behalf of his people. A king that loves justice and peace. That's really good for the kingdom. If you have a ruthless, angry, bitter, psychotic king, that's a problem. Because a king rules over his kingdom with absolute authority. Okay.
That's just so that we get what a king and a kingdom is. Matthew chapter 1. I'm going to pray. We're going to hop into Matthew chapter 1. If you've got one of the Bibles on the rows, it should be page 523. So let's pray and then we'll look at Matthew chapter 1.
God, we thank you for this time that we get to gather as church family and open your word and learn about you. Pray that you would teach us. That your Holy Spirit would come and reveal to us truth about yourself. That you would draw us closer to you. We praise you. We thank you in Jesus' name.
Amen. Matthew chapter 1. The book of the genealogy is Matthew chapter 1 verse 1. This is Matthew writing a gospel about Jesus, writing a story about Jesus, telling us what he did when he was on earth. This is how he starts. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
Genealogy just means his lineage, his family history, his granddaddy and that guy's daddy and his granddaddy's daddy, that kind of thing. In the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, we're going to come back to that, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the first Jewish person. And so what he has immediately declared is that David was the first, like, legitimate good king. Saul was there for a while and then David was, like, the king after Saul. What he just started off with was Abraham, the first Jewish guy, David.
And he's saying that his lineage, he comes straight from Abraham through David to Jesus. That's what he's telling us here. Let me just pause for just a second and tell you this because I think it's helpful, although it doesn't really apply to what we're talking about today. But I just think it's helpful for us to know as people who live in the United States. Jesus was Jewish. Super, super Jewish.
There's some discussion in the United States about whether he was white or black. He was Jewish. Abraham to David, Jewish. Like, recently, like, we get in this discussion about Santa Claus. Jesus isn't up for debate. He was a real person.
He had, like, he was Jewish. Like, you don't get to come to me and be like, hey, I just want to let you know we're transferring you. You're Italian now. Like, that's not how that works. Like, that wasn't chosen for me. I'm going to be, like, pasty Scottish Iris my entire life.
You're not transferring that. Jesus was Jewish. Like, around Christmas, they were talking about Santa Claus, and then one of the ladies on Fox News said, she said, Santa Claus was white and Jesus was white. Get over it. No, no. He's Jewish.
Like, look, just so you know, for all the people in this room, in this book, no white people. They're not here, guys. They don't show up. So if you're always picturing, like, curly-haired blonde people, they're not here. No white people here. No blue eyes.
Wasn't here. There are some Africans in this book, but finding a white person in first-century Palestine would have been like, I heard a guy say it was like, it'd be like watching Bigfoot ride a unicorn through the middle of New York. It's just not happening. Amen. So just wanted to help you out with that.
Abraham was the father of Isaac. So it's the book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. That had nothing to do with what we're talking about. That was just free for y'all. Abraham was the father of Isaac. And Isaac, the father of Jacob.
And Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers. And Judah was the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar. And Perez, the father of Hezron. And Hezron, the father of Ram. And Ram, the father of Amminadab. And Amminadab, the father of Nashon.
And Nashon, the father of Sam. And Sam, the father of Boaz by Rahab. And Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth. And Obed, the father of Jesse. And Jesse, the father of David, the king. Whew.
Matthew coming out swinging with this names on names on names on names. Just so you know, if you take a creative writing class, they're not going to tell you to do that. That's not how you start a story. Really hook people. Give a list of names for your main character's genealogy. That's what people like.
Nobody was reading that going, oh my goodness. This is a high quality literature. This is almost as good as my other favorite book, the phone book. Like nobody was doing that. Because we don't get what Matthew is saying. Jewish people, which is who Matthew is writing to, just freaked out.
Now, when a Jewish person reads this, they said, oh, Matthew came out swinging. And he's not playing around with what he's just about to tell us about Jesus. Matthew starts off and says, let me tell you about Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham. And then he goes through his list and he says, he's the son of David, the king. And Jewish people just said, oh, no. This has gotten serious really quickly.
And here's why. Old Testament, God comes to David and promises David. The God of the universe comes to the king of Israel, David, who's David the king. That's why he's listed that way. King of Israel had a bunch of kings. Judah had a bunch of kings.
David is the king. When you were a little kid in Israel and you were swinging a stick at a tree, you were being David. Everybody had the David action figure. Every time you threw a rock at a bully, you were being David. Like little kids were David. He's the king.
And here's why. God shows up to David and promises him that you will have a king that comes from your lineage that will be a king forever. That will never fail to be a son of David on the throne. And it will be an eternal worldwide dominion. That's the promise made to David. So that happens in 2 Samuel.
I'm going to go through and tell you just a little bit about this king that is over and over and over again prophesied in the Old Testament. 2 Samuel 7. There's going to be a king who comes from, this is God talking to David, comes from your body. I will establish his kingdom. I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.
Your throne shall be established forever. Jeremiah 33. Prophets are declaring about this king. A righteous branch will come out of David. And he will never lack a man on the throne. Isaiah 9.
Another prophet throughout Israel's history who's declaring that a government will be on this guy's shoulders. He will be called God. He will be called Prince of Peace. He will reign on David's throne establishing justice and peace and righteousness. Isaiah 11. The Spirit of God will dwell on him.
And he will judge on behalf of the needy and the poor. Isaiah 42. He will judge the nations giving sight to the blind and setting captives free. Isaiah 49. Says he will be despised. But kings and princes will rise up and bow down to him.
Daniel 7. Daniel 7. Says that he sees a son of man. Which is Jesus' favorite name for himself. Says that he sees a son of man who's given authority, glory, sovereign power over all people's nations. Men of every language will worship him.
And he will have dominion forever. And a kingdom that will never be destroyed. Zechariah 14. Says he'll destroy his enemies and be king over the whole earth. Malachi 3. Says that God will send someone ahead of this guy to declare that he's coming.
And then he says who will be able to stand when he shows up. But throughout the Old Testament, over and over again, after this promise made to David, it's promised over and over. This king's coming. He's coming. He's going to have an eternal dominion. All other kings are going to bow down to him.
He's going to last forever. He's going to reign with righteousness and justice and power. And he's going to be sovereign over everything. And so when Matthew starts off and says Jesus came in the line of David the king, everybody's ears perked up and said, what are you trying to get at? Where are you taking this? I know you're not about to say that he's the king.
The promised king we all know about. Matthew chapter 2. That's what Matthew's saying. Matthew chapter 2. We'll see how this works. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king.
Okay, so Herod is the king of Israel. It's really interesting that he's called king because they're ruled over by the Roman Empire. He's one of the only people in the Roman Empire who's ever allowed to be called king. So it just kind of points to his ruthlessness and political savvy that he's underneath another kingdom and still gets to be called king. So he says that Jesus was born in the line of David the king, and now he's telling us about another king.
In Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem saying. So wise men, this is why at Christmas you'll hear the song. We three kings of Orient are. Just thinking about these wise men. They weren't kings. They were wise men.
But they're from the east, and that's the Orient. In that song. That was also free, just so you know what you're singing about. Wise men came to the east from Jerusalem saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose. So a new star shows up.
That's why in all the nativity scenes you see there's a little star at the top. This is over top of where Jesus was. A new star shows up. We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled. And all Jerusalem with him.
Yeah. Of course Herod the king is troubled. He's the king. And these wise men from the east said, Hey, we study the stars. We study astrology. And the king has been born.
So they come and say, We want to see the king. And Herod's like, I'm here. And they're like, No, no. The king. The one that's been born king. The capital K king.
The one who's been prophesied king. The one that creation bends to king. We came to ask you because we thought you might be able to help us find him. But you're not who we're looking for. Appreciate the autograph. You can put it back.
We want to see the real one. And so Herod's troubled because he's a king. And there's another king born. Just for the record, You don't have two kings. Kings don't coexist. They don't have tandem thrones.
It wasn't like a cute thing they used to do back in the day. One king. That's how he got to be king. No other kings. So Herod's troubled.
And that makes sense because they just said, Hey, we want to see the king, The prophesied king. The one that's going to rule over you king. The one that princes are going to rise up and bow down to king. The guy who's in charge of you, Even though he's an infant. Herod's troubled. And assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.
He did not misunderstand what they were saying. He knew the prophecies. That's why he gets the people who study the Old Testament and says, Where is he going to be? Because they just said that he was born. That a star showed up for him. And he's here.
Where does it say he's going to be born? Because he knew exactly who they were talking about. The person we just read about. And assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. And they told him, In Bethlehem of Judea. For so it is written by the prophet, And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah.
This is Micah the prophet says this. Still talking about this king. And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, Are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared.
And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, Go and search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him. After listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them, Until it came to rest over the place where the child was. The child's Jesus. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.
Then going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, And they fell down and worshipped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, They departed to their own country by another way. Okay. So they come.
They say, We saw this star. We're wise men. We study these things. We saw this star. We know what's happening. We know the old text.
Where is he? And he says, I don't know, but we'll find him. And he says, When you find him, let me know, because I want to worship him too. Now Herod's lying, and we'll get to see that in a second. And so that's what they told. They were warned in a dream not to tell Herod.
And they just to leave. And so wise men show up. And what they say is, We've seen signs that this is the king. We've seen signs that this is who we're supposed to worship. And their response is to an infant worship. And they open up their treasures, and they give to him, and they worship him as king.
13 Through 15, we're not going to read it, but it just says that in a dream, Joseph is warned that Herod's going to try to kill Jesus. And so they go to Egypt. So Herod does what kings do. He defends his throne with absolute authority. He just declares, Go in there, round up all males, two years older, younger, kill them. And they do.
But Joseph's family had been warned, and so they had left. Herod was a bad dude. He was kind of psychotic. He killed a lot of people. He killed a lot of his wives. He had more than one because he kept killing them.
He killed a lot of his wives and a lot of his sons. And one of the emperors actually said that it's better to be Herod's pig than his son, which is a Greek joke because pig and son sound similar. And so he made a little pun about, a little joke about, because he's Jewish, so Jewish people don't eat pigs. So he's like, if you want to be safe and live in Herod's house, be his pig, not his son, because he's going to kill you if you're his son. Because every time Herod started noticing anybody around him getting a little bit of power, he got rid of them, forcibly. So these wise men show up and say, we're here to worship the king, the capital K king, the prophesied king.
And Herod says, yeah, me too. Oh, that'd be great. Tell me where he is. And then when they trick him, he just kills all the infants he can find. Wise men want to worship, want to bow down, want to give everything in submission to Jesus. And Herod, because he has some authority, wants to defend it.
Now here's what's true. Jesus is the king in the line of David, the king, who is an eternal king. Which means that his rule and his reign comes to us through history because he is eternal. See, Jesus died, but he didn't stay dead. Everyone in this room is going to die. I saw a statistic recently that death rate in America is hovering right around 100%.
It's like 10 out of 10 people. It's really sad. Everyone in this room is going to die, and I can tell you something about you. You're going to stay dead. We won't have your funeral and then eat with you a week later. That's what they did with Jesus.
That's irregular. It is. And then he ascended into heaven, and he exists still and rules and reigns. And he is the eternal king who has eternal dominion. And one day he will return, conquer all of his enemies. Scripture tells us this.
And then he will have his kingdom forever. We have the same options that we hear in this story. We can, like the wise men, submit, worship. Or we can, like Herod, fight and defend our kingdom. Those are the options we have. Everyone in this room, you're going to make that decision.
If you decide to not do anything with Jesus, you've made that decision. I'll be king, thanks. I'll be in charge, thanks. That's how it works. Let me tell you something that's very true. You love being king.
It's your favorite. You don't think about it a whole lot, but you really love being in charge of what you do. I love being in charge of what I do. That's why I love being an American. That's why I own, like, 12 guns. Because I get to be in charge of what I do.
And if someone tries to keep me from being in charge of what I do, up until a point, let's go. It's go time. We love it. Let me tell you something else that's true about you. You're a terrible king. You're the worst at it.
You love it, but you're bad at it. You make horrible decisions. You give yourself the benefit of the doubt a lot, but you're terrible. Most of us are like, no, I'm a good king. I know I did eighth grade twice, and I'm in debt because I can't manage a budget. But I'm a great king.
And that's just not how it works. So the question becomes for us, is Jesus a good king? Because he declares that he's king. When a king shows up and declares that he's king, you have to do something with that. He is the eternal king. And so the question becomes, is he a good king?
Good king, good kingdom. Bad king, bad kingdom. Is he a hero? Is he a tyrant? And the second question that fits underneath that is, is he a better king than I am? Is he willing to do things for me that I'm not willing to do?
Is he willing to step in on my behalf when I can't fix situations? Is he a good king? Is he a hero? Matthew 1, verse 21 should be on the same page or a page back, depending on what your Bible looks like. Matthew 1, verse 21 says this. This is an angel talking to Joseph.
Jesus' adopted father. And he's talking about Mary. He says, Good kings defend their territory, ride in, and are heroes. You see, when you're in a place that's being ransacked, that has enemies, that's being torn down, you don't have walls, you don't have a defense, everything. A king rides up and says, I will fight for you. You say, thank you so much.
This place is a hot mess. We need some rules. We need some help here. Thank you. And when you feel like you have some control and some authority and things are going pretty well, you don't do that when a king shows up. But here's what it's saying.
It says that Jesus will save his people from their sins, which means that we have an enemy that we're losing to. That ultimately our problem is sin. That's what has marred us as humans. That's what's caused pain and destruction and rebellion. That's what's broken up our relationships. That's what's hurt us.
And that Jesus will save us from our sins. And what he did was he lived on earth a perfect, sinless life and died for us. That's why Jesus went to the cross. He died for us to pay for our sin. And then he rose again, rescuing us. And so I can tell you very definitively that Jesus is a good king.
And for every person in this room, he's a better king than you are. But ultimately, we've got the same two options. Follow, worship, love Jesus as king, or do everything we can to defend our own kingdom. With logical arguments. With excuses. With just, I don't want to get into that.
I don't want to think about it. I just want to do me. See, it's the choices. That's how it works. We're going to spend the next several weeks as we walk through this series. Just looking at what kind of kingdom does Jesus have?
What kind of king is he? We know that he's a hero that saves his people from their sins. But we're going to investigate a little more about what his kingdom looks like. But I just want everybody to know that Jesus is an eternal king. He does rule and he does reign. He is a good king.
And we all have the same options that they have. The band's going to come back up. We're going to sing some more. We're going to praise Jesus as king. Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you that you are a good king.
That you did die on our behalf. God, we pray that through your Holy Spirit you would lead us. To like the wise men bow and worship you as a good king. Even though we seek to do everything we can to defend our own kingdom, our own sovereignty. Thank you, Jesus. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.