Wrestling with God

Wrestling with God

Chet Phillips

Transcript

It's good to see y'all this morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. If you're new and I haven't had a chance to meet you yet, hopefully I'll get to soon. It's good to see y'all. Grab a Bible.

Go to Genesis chapter 32. It'll be on page 16 if you grab one of these blue Bibles. If you don't own a Bible, steal this one. It's our gift to you. Take it home. Read it often.

We want you to have a Bible. We have been walking through the book of Genesis and following along with this family, seeing how God has worked through human history and how he specifically has chosen this family that he is going to, he says, through them he's going to make a people. He's going to give them a place. He's going to bless them and he's going to bless the world. And we've been following along with Jacob. Now, Jacob was a twin.

His mama, Rebecca, was pregnant and she was pregnant with two children. It's the first children she had had. Pregnancy is tough. This one was tougher. It was hard. The children inside of her fought one another.

They didn't get along from before they were born. Esau is born first. Jacob comes out second. Jacob comes out holding on to Esau's foot. He was a very close second. And he comes out holding on to Esau's foot.

And this matters a lot. The names they give their children are basically hairy and foot grabber. They name them the way they look. Esau's big, kind of hairy. Jacob comes out second. He's holding on to his foot.

And the word they use, Jacob, means sneaky or tricky or deceiver. And it kind of follows him the rest of his life. That's what they name their children. And it matters that he came out second because in some ways in this patriarchal society, it's like they were children of a king. So here's what that means.

If you have a family in a monarchy and there's a king and a queen, their firstborn son will get to be king. You ever seen the line, King? It was the firstborn son saying, I can't wait to be king. Singing that song, that's who gets to be king. And the secondborn son gets to be the king's brother. That's it.

You get to see him. You get to see his crown. Maybe he'll take it off, let you look at it. Maybe he'll let you polish it up for him, wear it at night, give it back to him. I don't know. But you don't get to be king.

And that's kind of how this worked. Esau's firstborn, so he gets the birthright. He gets the blessing. He gets the patriarchy. And Jacob coming out, holding on to his foot, close, silver medal, gets to be Esau's brother. That's it.

And so Jacob spends his life fighting with, wrestling with Esau over this. He eventually tricks him. He takes advantage of him. Esau wasn't real tricked because he knew what he was doing. But he sells his birthright for some soup.

And then Jacob dresses up like Esau, actually puts on a little Esau outfit, and tricks his father, who was going blind, into receiving the blessing. Now, this is a big deal. He got the birthright through the soup transaction, which was taking advantage. But then he just lies and tricks his father and his brother, and he steals a blessing. Now, the blessing is priceless. It's not something that he can give back.

It's not something that he could exchange something else for. He steals something priceless. Now, think about this for a second. If you had twin brothers today, one of them doing okay for himself, well-liked in the family, and the other one, not so much. But this one, because they're twins, he just kind of steals his brother's identity.

He goes and closes out his 401k, closes out his bank account, goes and takes his car, because he looks like him, and he knows how to do the signature. He sells his car. And he suddenly puts his brother in a bind. All of a sudden, his checks are bouncing. His things are getting repoed. He's getting in trouble.

And he realizes that his brother has just tricked him. He's just pretended to be him and stolen everything he has. That still pales in comparison to what Jacob did, because Jacob took something priceless. I don't care if he, the illustration I gave, I don't care if he took $100,000. That can get, you can get that back. You can't get this blessing back.

And so when he does this, Esau, who is big and hairy and lives outside and hunts, he's like Chewbacca, has the crossbow and everything, decides, I'm just going to kill Jacob. And so Jacob, who has torn this family apart, basically he and his mom have to come up with a reason for him to leave, and they dress it up as best they can. They do bless him and send him out, but he leaves with a stick. Give him a walking stick. And they say, hit the bricks. Or, didn't have bricks hit the dirt.

I don't know. Head to the woods. And he leaves. He leaves, sent to go find a wife. He ends up finding four. And he lives in Haran, marries these wives, and then at some point God comes to him and says, it's time to go back home.

God, actually the blessing works. God says, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to give you the blessing that was in Abraham and Isaac. It's going to come to you. You're going to have a people. You're going to have a place.

You're going to be blessed. And now it's time to go back. He'd gone 500 miles away. Now it's time to come back. And that's where we pick up. Genesis 32.

I'm going to pray. Today's text is just great. And we're going to study it together. And it's going to be good. All right.

God, we pray that you would help us speak to us this morning. And you'd help us to listen. We love you. And we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Jacob went on his way.

He's been sent back home. And the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, this is God's camp. So he called the name of that place Mahanaim, which means two camps. His camp, God's camp. So he's traveling.

You take a whole group of people. You'll set up camp. He comes in. He sees angels. And he thinks, oh, we're in God's camp. And then it basically seems like they just kind of stopped there.

It says, Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau, his brother, in the land of Sire, the country of Edom, instructing them. Thus you shall say to my Lord Esau. Thus says your servant Jacob. I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. I have oxen, donkey, flocks, male servants and female servants. I have sent to tell my Lord in order that I may find favor in your sight.

You see, Jacob understands something. When God tells Jacob it's time to go back, Jacob understands that going back to the land of promise where God intends to bless him, he has to go through Esau. He doesn't just get to roll back in there, set up his camp and hope for the best. He knows that when God's sending him back, God's sending him back to and through Esau. Now, last he saw Esau, Esau was planning on killing him. And there's got to be a great amount of fear.

And in some ways, Esau personifies, he in human form represents to Jacob all the shystery, tricky, sneaky, sinful mess that Jacob's ever done. He's the person in his life that just shows Jacob's sinfulness, his brokenness, his wickedness. And Jacob knows that he's got to go through Esau to get to the promise. So he sends messengers to Esau. Now, if you'll just if you'll try to sympathize with Jacob for a second. If you knew that in order for your life to move forward and to be good and for you to follow what you were supposed to, you were going to have to face the people that you had wronged, the people that you had harmed.

If you knew that you were going to have to stand face to face with your sin and the consequences of your sin. Can you imagine the knot that would be tied in your stomach? The truth is, the reality is, is the Bible says that all of us will stand face to face with the weight of our sin. Jacob has to do it with Esau, but all of us will. Maybe you spread yours out. Jacob concentrated his.

He focused it primarily on Esau. Maybe you spread yours out. Maybe yours travels across high schools and Job sites and cities, but it's spread out. But one day you will stand face to face in judgment with your sin. And that's what he's facing. He's got to go through this.

He's got to recognize his sin. He's got to stand face to face with what he's done. And that's what he does. He sends messengers to Esau. And he says, I've sent to tell my Lord in order that I may find favor in your sight, knowing I can't just sneak past you. I can't just try to live here without you just haunting my dreams and suddenly being able to show up.

I know I've got to talk to you. I know I've got to address this. All right. Six. And the messengers returned to Jacob saying, we came to your brother Esau and he is coming to meet you. And there are 400 men with him.

Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him and the flocks and the herds and the camels into two camps, thinking if Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape. So he says, go tell him I'm coming back. Call him my Lord. Tell him I'm his servant. He sees his guys coming back.

They're moving a little bit too quickly for comfort. They show up. They say, all right, we told him what you said. Esau is on his way and he's bringing 400 men. Now, they can't be that far behind these people. And Jacob's not just I mean, he's greatly afraid and distressed because this sounds like a war party.

He thinks he was going to kill me by himself. Now he's going to kill everybody. He's bringing all his men with him. This is terrible. And his first plan is just let's just separate and then half of us can try to get away. Then it says this.

And Jacob said, oh, God of my father, Abraham and God of my father, Isaac, a Lord who said to me, return to your country and to your kindred that I may do you good. I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that he has shown to your servant. For with only my staff, I crossed this Jordan and now I have become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him that he may come and attack me and the mothers with their children. But you said, I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.

Jacob prays. We've seen him converse with God very little. He's been we've watched this guy's whole life and his relationship to God has been tumultuous and and sparse. But he prays in this moment. He prays. And so this is good for Jacob.

And you guys, it's a pretty good prayer. I was praying with my four year old about a week ago. He prayed and then I prayed and we got done. He said, Daddy, was my prayer good? I was like, yeah, buddy, it was a good prayer. And he said, it was better than your prayer.

Not wanting to bring competition into the prayer atmosphere. I said, well, maybe we tied, you know, and he went, OK, well, let's pray again. He does not want to tie. There are rankings in prayer, just so you know, there are good and bad prayers. Jesus says the Pharisees pray this pompous prayer that puffs themselves up. The truth is any prayer that's a genuine prayer is a good prayer if it's humble and genuine.

But this one's actually pretty good because what he says is, God, here's who you are. And then he says, I'm doing what you told me to. You're the God who told me to leave and to come here and that you're going to do me good. And then he says, I'm not worthy. Here's who I am. I'm not worthy of the least of the things you've given me.

That's beautiful to hear rolling off the tongue of Jacob because so far he has seemed kind of cocky, kind of sneaky, kind of. And he hears a little bit of humility. He says, I'm not worthy of all that you've done for me. And then he says, here's the situation. I'm afraid and I think Esau is going to kill everybody, not just me, but the mothers and their children. And then he says, but you promised to do me good.

That's a good prayer. God, here's who you are. Here's what you've promised. Here's who I am. Here's what you've promised. So he prays.

Then it says this. So he stayed there that night. So he comes. This is the Lord's camp. The angels he sees kind of shows that he's in the presence of God. So he's like, all right, we're going to stay here.

There's two camps here. I'm going to send them on. This is kind of encouraging that God's people, you know, God's angels are here. So I'm going to send them on to get this news. They come back and he just stays there in that camp that night. And from what he had with him, he took a present for his brother Esau.

200 Female goats and 20 male goats. 200 ewes and 20 rams. 30 milking camels and their calves. 40 cows and 10 bulls. 20 female donkeys. 10 male donkeys.

And then he handed over to his servant every drove by itself. And he said to his servants, pass on ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove. He instructed the first. When Esau, my brother, meets you and ask you to whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?

Then you shall say they belong to your servant, Jacob. They are a present sent to my Lord Esau. And moreover, he is behind us. He likewise instruct the second and the third and all who follow the droves. You shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him. And you shall say, moreover, your servant Jacob is behind us.

For he thought I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me. And afterward, I shall see him face to face. Perhaps he will accept me. So the present passed on ahead of him and he himself stayed that night in the camp. Okay. He splits his camps up.

Then he prays. Then he comes up with this present idea. And this present idea doesn't sound like that bad of an idea. He's going to give Esau gifts. This is going to slow Esau down. Maybe let's give him a little bit of time to think.

And while he's thinking, let's give him some presents. That's what he's doing. It doesn't tell us whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. It doesn't tell us that this was in humility. This isn't in restitution. This is, it says, maybe it'll appease him.

And then he says, after that, I'll see him face to face. And what we see held together so clearly here in Jacob is half of this is obedience. Half of this is faith. He's praying. We've never seen that. He's going to go see Esau face to face.

He's going to go face what God's given him. And half of this is old Jacob. Making a little schemey plan. Coming up with a cool idea. If I could just do this. Maybe it'll work out.

And the reason I love that when I notice that in the text. Isn't that us? That's our church family, y'all. You're walking in life. I'm trying to follow Jesus. I'm going to do this thing.

I'm doing what he told me to. Something happens. And then boom. Half and half. Talk to you one day. I've just been praying.

I've just been trusting the Lord. Prayer hands. Hallelujah. Emoji. Whatever. The next day.

All right. Well, I may have an ounce of weed on me. I'm really stressed out. Okay. I've been praying. I've been trusting.

I'm following the Lord. I'm doing what I'm supposed to. You know what? I called her up and I cussed her and her mama out. Okay. Half and half.

Half repentance. Half following. Half praying. Half running back to what we used to chase after. Half running to what we used to make us feel good. Half running.

Blowing off steam. Whatever. That's Jacob. So he's growing. He's coming along. He's back and forth.

Let's see what happens. The same night. He arose and took his two wives. All right. He can't sleep. Like he just is.

He's antsy. He gets up. He takes his two wives. His two female servants. His 11 children. And crossed the ford of the Yabak.

So he said he was at the Jordan. Now he's at like the Yabak part of this. And it's a ford. Which means it's a shallow part. You can walk across. And so he takes his wives and children across.

He's getting them to the other side. He's trying to get them to a safer position. Maybe. Maybe he's just thinking. All right.

We got to just keep pressing forward. We don't exactly know where he's kind of lining them up in relation to where Esau is. He's got children at varying ages. He's taking them across. Some kids are being held. Some are maybe you're holding their hands.

Some of the older kids are maybe holding kids. He's got 11 kids. He gets them across. And Jacob was left alone. So he comes back across.

Maybe he's checking. Making sure everything. Everybody got across. He's by himself. We don't know what he's going to do. If he's going to pray.

And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. Okay. What? That's written in the text intending to be a surprise. Like it's as surprising to us as it was to Jacob. He's getting his family across.

He hadn't slept. He hadn't eaten. He's stressed out. He comes back. And now in the dark at night, there's a man who wrestles with him until the breaking of day. We don't know at what point they started wrestling.

We just know they wrestle until the breaking of day. Now that word wrestle means dirtied. They rolled around in the dirt. This was a fight. Which, I mean, if you're in the woods in the dark at night and a man comes and lays his hands on you, that's a fight. I mean, let's be real.

Adrenaline is pumping up past your ears like you are. And they're fighting. Now, at this point, Jacob's in his 60s. Now, he would have been a healthy 60. He was tough. He was out in the world.

He was working. So you saw him. When he said he was 65, you'd have been like, 65? That's what he looked like. We don't know if he was sitting. And all of a sudden, he heard, and he turned just in time for somebody to tackle him.

We don't know if somebody walked up on him. And he was like, hey, who are you? Are you one of the what's going on? And then they just grabbed him. But we know at some point they're on the ground.

Like, not like a pretty fight. You ever seen like a good, like a movie in a good fight? And they're like kicking and punching. And it looks nice. This does not look nice. This is a wrestling, dirty, somebody's got somebody's head smushing them into the ground kind of fight.

Fingers in the face like this. The kind when you break middle schoolers apart, they're sweating and red. That's this kind of fight. If you watch UFC, it's the boring part of the fight. Where there's like tangled up. And people are like, what is this?

It's like man sport. They're wearing underwear and hugging each other. This is weird. Yeah, but in a minute, they're going to catch their breath and go back to punching. That's what they're doing. Until the breaking of day.

Who is Jacob fighting? We do not know. Jacob does not know. He's trying to win. It's going to slowly kind of reveal this to us. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob.

Okay. Nobody's winning. Both tired. Both sweating. Both dirty. Rolling around.

Fighting. He touched. He touched. His hip socket. And Jacob's hip. Was put out.

Of joint. As he wrestled with him. Okay. The word touched. Means. Touched.

Touched. That's what it means. It means touch. There are like one or two places in the Bible where it is translated strike. But they're trying to read into the context there.

But the word means touch. This is like he's fighting. And the person he's fighting does the Kung Fu Panda Wushu finger hold thing. Skadoosh. And his hip. Pops out of joint.

Now. This is just a poll question. Because it took me. I had to look some stuff up. Anybody here. Ever dislocated their shoulder.

Or know someone who dislocates their shoulder on a semi-regular basis. Anybody. This is legit. I want to see your hands. This is just for me. I want to see something.

Okay. Anybody ever dislocated their hip. Or know someone who dislocates their hip. Okay. A few people. It doesn't happen super often.

Oh just for the record. Next time someone asks you that shoulder dislocation thing. You can raise your hand. Matt Freeman does. He dislocates his shoulder periodically. But he doesn't dislocate his hip.

I've had to watch videos. I was trying to see what this looked like. If you dislocate your hip. Your foot kind of turns around like this. The only one I saw. Most of it was just like how to treat it.

And has a lot to do with being elderly. Mostly what it seemed like. But I saw a guy running. In baseball. And then he just fell over. And that was what his dislocated hip did.

And then he laid and held his leg. Like he was in excruciating pain. They're wrestling. It's a tie. So Jacob's doing okay.

And then all of a sudden. Pow! Hips out. Jacob has searing pain. And. Light bulb.

Okay. I was in God's camp. I saw angels. I'm now wrestling someone in the dark. I was doing okay. And then.

They just. Pinned. And my legs out. I think Jacob's got an idea. That this is not just a man. This is not.

Normal. Situation. And then he says this. Let me go. For the day. Has broken.

So the man knocks his hip. Out of socket. And then says. Let me go. The sun's coming up. That's.

That's weird. You guys. Sorry. I'm a woodland night wrestler. I don't wrestle during the day. It's not my thing.

What? What? Like if you. If you're telling stories to children. And you're like. The sun was coming up.

It's like. Okay. Are we telling a story about an ogre? Because I think they turned to stone. Is this Fiona? Is she going to turn into like a lady?

Like we don't know. What's happening here? Why? What is the sun coming up? Like I don't like. It gets hot.

You know. I like to wrestle in the cool. Jacob. Coming from a culture. Where this would have clicked in his brain. And just further added to what he.

Understood was going on. They understood. That God. Was holy. Meaning. Completely others.

Separate from us. And that if you saw him. You'll die. Like it. It will just. It will kill you.

You can't handle it. This is why. Peter. When he's on the boat with Jesus. And they catch all the fists. Peter falls down.

And says. I'm not worthy. This is why. Isaiah. When he's brought into the throne room of God. Says.

I'm not worthy. I come from an unclean people. This is why. When an angel. The Lord comes to Samson's parents. And talks to him.

And then he leaves. Samson. Samson's daddy. He looks at Samson's mama. And says. We're going to die.

And Samson's mama says. I think he would have killed us. If he was going to. I don't. I don't think we're going to. And then they don't.

But this is. This is what they understood. Like if I see God. This is why Moses. When he sees God. He actually.

Moses gets to see God. In his glory. And he glows. Glows. For the rest of his life. Glows.

Like. Daytime. Skin glow. So much so. That when he comes back. He doesn't know he's glowing.

He comes back. They see him. And everybody runs from him. And he has to be like. No. No.

It's okay. And they're like. No bro. It's not okay. He has to wear a veil. Because he glows.

So. Touches his hip. Hip shoots out a joint. I know I'm in God's camp. Now he says.

The sun's coming up. I need to go. You don't need to see me. It's basically what he's saying. And so. Any.

Smart. Person. Who's not Jacob. In this situation. Would have said. Let's see what Jacob does.

But Jacob said. I will not let you go. Unless you bless me. That's crazy. And it actually shows us. Not just something about Jacob.

But something about God. He says. I'm not letting you go. Unless you bless me. What Jacob's saying is. Kill me if you have to.

Let this destroy me. I need you to bless me. I can't go. One. Step. Further.

Without you. Blessing me. I can't face Esau. I can't stand up to my past. I can't be the man I was. Without you blessing me.

And he just holds on to him. As soon as he figures out who he is. He says. No. No. No.

No. No. No. No. No. I will not let go of you.

Until you bless me. Now if God didn't like that. This would be the end of the story of Jacob. But God likes that. Because Jacob understands who God is. And who Jacob is.

God is the one who blesses. You see. Sometimes we get into the idea. That maybe I'll bless God. I'll serve him. I'll do something for him.

I owe him something. He wants some morality from me. He wants some good work from me. I can present it to him. And then he'll be pleased. He'll be happy.

He'll bless me. But that's not an exchange. It's that we have nothing. We roll in the dirt. Hold on to his foot. And say just bless me.

That's the right posture. And that's what Jacob does. He holds on to him. And he said to him. What is your name? Now he knows his name.

But watch this. And he said. Jacob. When he says my name is Jacob. He has to own up to who he has been his entire life. I'm a deceiver.

I'm scheming. I'm a tricker. There's a lot of weight and baggage that goes with that name. He feels it every day. Then he said.

Your name shall no longer be called Jacob. But Israel. For you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. Then Jacob said. Please tell me your name. But he said.

Why is it that you ask my name? And there he blessed him. Now blessings are verbal. We don't know what he says. Doesn't tell us. Because he was blessed.

Puts his hand on him. Blesses him. So Jacob called the place Peniel. Saying. For I have seen God face to face. And yet my life has been delivered.

The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel. Limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh. That is on the hip socket. Because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip. And the sinew of the thigh.

Jacob is blessed. He gets up. He is limping. And the sun rises. And the sun rises. On a limping.

Broken. Blessed. Jacob. On a limping. Broken. Blessed.

Israel. He has been given a new name. Now I am willing to bet. When his family saw him. He looked terrible. But there was like a glow about him.

He was different. He looked like. He had been really stressed out. Stayed up all night. And gotten beat up. But like in a good way.

And if you have ever seen somebody coming out of mourning. And coming out of pain. You might know what I am talking about. That is what he is doing. The sun rises on him. Chapter 33.

And Jacob lifted up his eyes. And looked. And behold. Esau was coming. And 400 men with him. You ever seen those old western movies.

Where you like look. And it is one person. And then they start talking among themselves. And they are like. Who is that? And they look back.

And it is just all these people on a ridge. It is kind of. Esau. 400 men. Coming towards him. So he divided the children among Leah.

And Rachel. And the two female servants. And he put the servants with their children in front. Then Leah with her children. And Rachel and Joseph. Last of all.

He himself went on before them. Bowing himself to the ground seven times. Until he came near to his brother. Bowing himself seven times is absolute submission. I am your servant. He is actually reversing what the blessing was.

The blessing was that. Jacob's brothers would bow down to him. And he comes and bows down to his brother. In humility and in repentance comes to his brother. But Esau ran to meet him.

And embraced him. And fell on his neck. And kissed him. And they wept. So Jacob.

Bowing. Getting up. Bowing. Getting up. When he gets close enough to run. Esau takes off running.

And Jacob thinks. Okay. He is not going to shoot me with a bow. He is going to do this with his bare hands. And he gets closer. And the face isn't angry.

He is happy. Sad. They hug. They cry. They weep. They kiss.

And they reconcile. And that is beautiful. It is beautiful on Esau's part. That he forgives his brother. And it is beautiful on Jacob's part. That he repents.

And he goes to him. And he faces what God sent him to face. And when Esau lifted up his eyes. And saw the women and the children. He said. Who are these with you?

And Jacob said. The children whom God has graciously given to your servant. The rest of this. Is he and Esau talking. And discussing where they are going. And how to get there.

And Esau keeps trying to offer to do extra stuff. And Jacob is just like. No. Just let us move slowly. We are good. And then Jacob kind of settles in a different place.

And so. If you look at 18. And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem. Which is in the land of Canaan. And on his way from Paddan Aram. And he camped before the city.

And from the sons of Hamor. Shechem's father. He bought for a hundred pieces of money. The piece of land on which he had pitched his tent. There he erected an altar. And called it El Elohe Israel.

Which means God. The God of Israel. Jacob reconciles with his brother. Moves back into the promised land. Owns some land. Sets his tent up.

Builds an altar. And says God is the God of Israel. I'm new. I'm changed. I'm not Jacob. I'm Israel.

Jacob was the old man. Israel is the new man. And he limped his way there. With a smile on his face. And some peace that he had never understood. And he got to live in the land.

Because he knew Esau knew where he was. And he got to live there peacefully. Not worrying about it. Now. There's a bit of this story. That is a little bit embarrassing for us.

That if. As Christians. As we look at this story. There's a little bit that's like. Wait. God.

Came to the ground. And wrestled Jacob. Like. Part of it just feels like. Wow. What?

It feels degrading. Like. Like if it just said. Heaven opened up. And he was shining. And Jacob went blind.

Or his face melted off. Or it looked like the scene from. Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or something like that. Like. Yeah.

That's what God does. But it's like. No. God sneaks up on him. In the dark. And fights him.

And there's a little bit. That like. That feels humiliating. That feels small. That feels. The truth is.

How beautiful is that? That God. Creator of the universe. Holds everything in his hand. Comes to Jacob. And does what Jacob needed.

He says. You've wrestled with God. And with man. And you've prevailed. You see. The truth is.

God did for Jacob. What Jacob needed. Jacob hadn't stopped fighting. His whole life. Had been wrestling. It said that they wrestled.

And when. When God saw. That he did not prevail. Over Jacob. Then he.

Breaks him. Now think about that. God's been wrestling. With Jacob. His whole life. Fighting with Jacob.

His whole life. And Jacob. Has not quit. So God. Breaks him. And in that moment.

God says. You have prevailed. That it was at the moment. When God defeats Jacob. That Jacob. Wins.

Because. God. Was wrestling Jacob. On Jacob's path. Now. Jacob doesn't get to live.

In the promised land. Without facing Esau. And he doesn't get. To get the blessing. Without being broken. And the truth is.

As small as this seems. And as humble as it seems. For God. To have done this. Jesus. Blows this out of the water.

That our God. So much more. Will God. Join us. And wrestle with us. So much more.

Will God. Humble himself. To fight with somebody. In the dirt. So much more.

He'll be born. As a human. Not just look like one. And he'll die. That's what Philippians says. I have it on the screen.

Behind me. It says. Being found. In human form. He humbled himself. By becoming obedient.

To the point of death. Even. Death. On a cross. Some of you may be saying. I wish God would do that for me.

He is doing that. He is wrestling with you. He is fighting with you. And he has done. So much more.

Than show up. And push your head. Into the dirt. He showed up. And he was the one. Who was beaten.

He was the one. Who was broken. And he was buried. That you might have life. And he rose. Again.

And I want you. To see something. So clearly here. You don't get. The promised land. Without having to face.

All the sin. And all the brokenness. And all the things. You've ever done wrong. Jacob didn't get to live there. Free.

And happy. Without Esau. Lurking in the back of his mind. Forever. Until he went and faced Esau. You don't get.

The blessing. That you so desperately need. Until God takes you. And breaks you. Over your sin. And your wickedness.

And your brokenness. Until he does to you. And shows you. What you've been doing to everybody. Your whole life. And you don't get the resurrection.

Until you get the cross. But so many of us. Even us in here. In our church family. In our community groups. Are trying to bypass.

Brokenness. And just get. Blessing. And joy. And what we're trying to do. Is Jacob.

Before God grabbed him. And stuck him in the dirt. We're trying to do a little bit of both. There are some of you. Who every time. It's time to confess.

Every time God tries to make you face. Your Esau. You just back out. Every time. He goes to break you. You let go.

You don't cling. You don't say. Okay. Break me. But bless me.

You just back up. Because you don't want it. You don't want the pain. You don't want the confession. You want to try to live. In the land of promise.

But Esau. Is lurking in the background. Some of you do not feel free. Because you have not confessed. Some of you have your sin. Hanging in the background.

And let me tell you something. It will not remain hidden. By God's grace. It will tackle you in the dark. And you will face it here. Because if God in his grace.

Does not do that. You will face it at the end of the line. And you will stand. And be held accountable. For your sin. Before a holy God.

And that is not the time to do it. That is to be a reunion. With the God who broke you. And blessed you. So that joyous tears.

Fall down your face. And you wrap your arms. Around the sin. That would have condemned you. That now has saved you. Because Jesus paid for it.

Second Corinthians 7. 10 says. For godly grief. Produces repentance. That leads to salvation. Without regret.

Whereas worldly grief. Produces death. I pray that God. Pierces your heart. Through the Holy Spirit. That you grieve.

Your sin. So that. You may have salvation. Without regret. You ever seen somebody. Confessing sin.

And talking about their past sin. With such freedom. That you couldn't understand it. I'm not talking about bragging about it. Because there's something about. Bragging about past sin.

That still stinks. That still reeks of this shame. And this guilt. And this pride. It's like. I'm trying to glory in my shame.

So that I can feel okay about it. I'm talking about someone. Who can just own the fact. That they used to do this. I used to be Jacob. But the reason I can tell you.

Yeah it used to be Jacob. But now I'm Israel. I've been set free from it. Have you seen that? How beautiful it is. That.

Is godly grief. That reproduced salvation. Without regret. But worldly grief. Just produces death. Psalm 51.

17. Says the sacrifices of God. Are a broken spirit. And a broken and contrite heart. Oh God. You will not despise.

One of the things. The scripture tells us. Is that God will turn mourning. Into joy. And will turn joy. Into mourning.

That if we try to just skip past. Into just. I'm going to live my best life now. Eventually that. Ends. In.

Brokenness. And mourning. And pain. But if we. Live here. In mourning.

And brokenness. And own our sin. And go to God. We limp. But we're blessed.

I pray that we would not have. A single person in here. Who struts around with swagger. But that we'd have. A whole bunch of people. Who limp.

But the sun shining on us. I served with a recovery program. At Midtown. One of the things we used to do. Is we would have. Everybody when they first started.

They would write down the names. That marked them. The things that if you. They described themselves. They would write down worthless. They would write down.

Unloved. They would write down. Sinful. And broken. And evil. They would write down.

Abused. They would write down. Abuser. And then we'd walk through. Recovery. We'd point them to Jesus.

We'd talk about what he's done for us. In the cross. And at the end. We'd say. What's your new name? They'd write down.

Loved. Worthy. And not because they're worthy. But because Jesus has made them worthy. That they'd write down. Cherished.

They'd write down. Forgiven. They'd write down. Free. Free. Don't leave here.

Carrying the name Jacob. And don't want God. Right when he goes to break you. Don't take off running. Don't let go. Cling to him.

And say. You can break me. But you've got to bless me. I'll face Esau. I'll stand up to what I've done. And who I've been.

But you've got to bless me. And you've got to work. And I'll go through the cross. I'll die to my sins. So that I can rise again.

And be made new. And that's what. 2 Corinthians 5.17 says. Therefore. If anyone is in Christ. He is a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold the new has come. We have no desire. Whatsoever. To help you be a slightly better person. Zero desire.

We want you to be a new person. We want you to be born again in Christ. Have zero desire to help you. Cuss less. And drink less. And be a little bit nicer.

And cheat on your taxes. Just a little bit less. And be half and half Jacob. Zero desire. That's the truth is. Sometimes we'll have people who say.

I've believed in Christ. I've placed my faith in Jesus. But if there hadn't been any brokenness. If there hasn't been any weeping. If you hadn't cried so much. That you thought you couldn't breathe.

If there hasn't been you face to face with your sin. If there hasn't been any moment where you realize. If I don't have Jesus. If he doesn't step in. I'm broken and busted. If all you've tried to do is sneak around Esau.

To live in the promised land. If all you've tried to do is run on over to Easter. Without Good Friday. To resurrection without cross. If you've never walked through this. Do not leave here without running to God.

And saying break me. Bianca's going to come back up. And here's what we're going to do. My prayer. Is that the Holy Spirit would work right now. That some of you know right now.

You've been running from this. And that every time he started to put a little pressure on you. To confess. Every time he started pressing on you. To repent. To actually change.

To not just try to mix it together. And be a little bit better. And kind of keep some of your old stuff. But every time he's actually pressed into you. And said. Now.

Every time you've been hanging out with your community group. And you're going around. And people are confessing. And it gets to you. And you have that moment. Where you think.

You feel almost like you're going to throw up. And some of you were like. No I was going to throw up. You were almost confessed. And then you just let go. He came to the point of almost breaking you.

And then you just ran. Don't. Be broken. Limp. Confess that you're a sinner. Own your sin.

And then let the sun rise. And be made new. That's the hope today. We're about to take communion. In a minute. They're going to sing.

We want you to wrestle with God. We want you to go before him and ask. Where do I need to confess? What have I hidden? What am I allowing to lurk around? Why am I not free?

And trust that he can break you. And his Holy Spirit can set you free. And you can have freedom and hope. Don't run from this. Some of you have been running for a long time. You've been wrestling for a long time.

You've been doing everything you possibly can. To keep God from taking something away from you. Or from fixing your soul. You're trying to be a little bit better. And you need to be made new. So bow your heads and let's pray.

God we pray that you would grant repentance. To those who ask it. And that you would grant brokenness. And mourning. That you would empower it through your Holy Spirit. That there might be those right now.

That would cling to you. And ask for your salvation. Ask for your forgiveness. Ask for the hope that only comes through you. Ask for the resurrection that only comes after the cross. That you might die for their sin.

That you might forgive them. That you might be broken for them. And they might see truly how much you love them. And the great lengths at which you are willing to go to redeem them. We pray that your Holy Spirit would move. And that people would respond.

And that anybody here today who is feeling that right now. Would not let go. They are feeling the pain of what it will take to confess. What it will mean to face what they have done. And who they have been. And to tell others.

And to be open about it. And they are feeling the pain and the fear over that. And we pray Lord that you would not let them go. And you would let them cling to you. That they might actually repent. And they might find freedom.

That they do not understand. Hope that is unparalleled. They would not be half and half. They would be wholly new. In a moment we are going to take communion. If you are a Christian.

I encourage you to confess. To repent. And then to take communion. Reminding yourself that Jesus was broken for you. His blood was shed for you. If you are not a Christian for the first time.

You need to place your faith in Him. You need to go to Him and say. I will not save myself. I am not letting go. Unless you bless me. Unless you save me.

Unless you redeem me. Unless you let me walk away from my past. We would encourage you to do that. And then take communion for the first time. And if you are not a Christian. Aren't ready yet to place your faith in Jesus.

We would just encourage you to sit. And respectfully decline communion. Is for those who have trusted in Christ. And His sacrifice. We pray that all around the room Lord. That your spirit is working.

That we might confess. That we might repent. And that we might be made new. And enjoy the beauty. And the life in you. That was purchased for us.

Because Christ is willing to humble Himself. Even unto death. And He rose again. That we might be free. Amen.

Psalm 51 - Repentance

Psalm 51 - Repentance

Chet Phillips

Transcript

All right, grab a Bible, go to Psalm 51. You'll be on page 271 if your Bible looks like this. If you don't own a Bible, take one of these home with you. It's our gift to you. We want you to have a Bible. We want you to read it.

My name is Chet. It's good to see you all this morning. Today we are in the fifth week of our Psalm series where we're trying to walk through the Psalms and spend some time allowing the Psalms to kind of train us in what it looks like to live a life of worship. The psalmists were writing as they related to God and that they begin to equip us and train us for what that looks like. How to love God, worship God, pray to God in the good times of life and the bad times, both emotionally when we're doing well and emotionally when our tank is empty. That's kind of what they're training us in.

And so we're going to be in Psalm 51 today and we're going to be talking about repentance. I want you to read. Your Bible should have some sort of heading before verse 1. It should say 51 and then there should be some sort of a heading that kind of tells us, and we find these often in the Psalms, that tell us what the circumstance is, who wrote it, what's going on, what it was used for, and then you'll see, you know, the little one and there'll be verse 1 and we'll go on down in the Psalm. So it says, To the choir master, so this Psalm was written as a song to be sung with a choir, to the choir master, a Psalm of David.

That's David the king, and we're going to talk more about him in just a second. When Nathan the prophet went to him after he, that's David, had gone into Bathsheba. To the choir master, a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. And so we are told at the very beginning of this Psalm what the circumstance is that we're under, what is being addressed, when this was written. It's referring to some events that we have recorded for us in 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12, and I'm just going to walk us through that story. I'd encourage you to write it down to go read it later, but I'm just going to kind of tell it to us.

So David is king, and David wasn't always a king. He used to be a shepherd, and he was like a little kind of shrimpy shepherd, although the Bible says he was good-looking, which has to make you feel really nice. If the Bible, the God of the universe, was like, no, you're handsome, put it in there, it's true. So it says that he was, but when Saul was king, God sends Samuel to go anoint the new king. He goes, and he goes to this family, the house of Jesse, and Jesse begins to put his sons in front of him, and Samuel sees him, and he's like, man, that's like a big, good-looking king, and God's like, no, not him, and he goes on down the line.

They eventually go all the way down, and you can tell, like, there's this moment in the text where it was just, like, awkward. They're just waiting, and none of the sons were king, and they forgot that David existed. Like, he has to ask, like, don't you have any other sons? And Jesse's like, no. Oh, yeah, there's the other one with the sheep, but, like, he's really far away, and obviously not. And Samuel's like, go get him.

So they go get him, and it turns out he's supposed to be king, and that's David. And David becomes king. He faces Goliath. Eventually, he becomes king. He's a great warrior. He's a great leader.

He's a man after God's own heart. He's a poet and a prophet. Like, this is, if you had, if you were a Jewish boy, in Old Testament times, you had the King David action figure. Like, he is, he's it. And then in 2 Samuel chapter 11, we're told this story. And it begins like this in 2 Samuel 11.

It says, in the spring, when the kings go to war, which just means it's not cold anymore. They got to go do something. In the spring, when the kings go to war, David sent Joab, but King David stayed home. And so they're giving us a hint in the text right away that David is not, he's veered from what he's supposed to be doing, and he's doing something different. And it says that one evening, David is walking around on the rooftop of the palace, and he sees Bathsheba. He doesn't know who she is.

He sees a beautiful woman bathing. And he calls his servants and says, I want y'all to go get that woman for me. So he's king. He has power. He should be out fighting war. He should be out leading his army.

But no, he sends someone else. And then he walks around the palace, and he sees this lady, and he says, I want y'all to, I want y'all to, I want y'all to go get her for me. And we're told that his servant responds in a way that I really, I'm so proud of the servant. We don't know his name, but I'm so proud. He responds like this. He says, you mean Bathsheba, Uriah's wife?

Like, he's trying to help him out. Like, I can't say that you should not do this, but I'm going to say all the words that I can possibly find right now to help you know that you should not do this. David misses it. Yes. If that's Bathsheba, Uriah's wife, then yes, that is what I'm saying. So they go get Bathsheba.

David and Bathsheba sleep together. We do not know, the text does not tell us, whether or not Bathsheba was excited about this, a willing participant, or if she just was caught up in something where David was in power, and this basically is rape. That when she was brought over there, she just had to go along with it for fear, for the position that he was in. They sleep together. Uriah, at this point, is in David's army. He is one of David's top 30 men.

David would have known who he was. I don't know if they hung out on weekends, but he would have known him. He is off fighting in a battle that David should be leading. David sleeps with his wife, sends her home. She contacts David later to say, you need to tell the king I'm pregnant. So David hatches a plan to cover up his own sin.

2 Samuel chapter 11, he sends messengers to the army and says, send Uriah back so that I can talk to him about how the battles are going. So Uriah is sent back. David is going to talk to Uriah, and then they talk. He says, how's the battle going? That's great. Good report.

Hey, man, you go home. Hang out a little bit. Uriah leaves the palace, walks out the doors, and sleeps on the steps. And it's reported to David, hey, Uriah didn't go home. He slept on the steps of the palace. David talks to him the next day and says, hey, you've been at battle for so long.

Why don't you go home? David's goal, his plan, what he's come up with, to cover and hide his sin, is for Uriah to go home, to sleep with his wife, and then Uriah will come back. His wife will be pregnant. He won't do the math that well. Maybe we can say it's a really big, healthy, premature child. And problem solved.

Uriah looks at David and says, how could I go home and spend time at home when my men are in the battle? I would not do such a thing. And he's being honorable, but this has to bring great shame on David. I don't think that was his goal, but it just shows, highlights in this moment, how honorable Uriah is being and how shameful David is. And David says, oh yeah, good point. We'll stay another night.

And David has him stay and has him drink until he gets drunk. His goal now is, okay, if Uriah won't do this in his right mind, I'll get him drunk and then maybe this will seem like a better idea. Some of you understand David's thought process here. He gets Uriah drunk. Uriah goes out of the palace, sleeps on the floor. So David has to come up with a new plan because his first plan is not working.

So David's new plan is, he has a message, he writes it, folds it up, seals it, hands it to Uriah and says, I need you to take this to Joab. Uriah delivers a message to Joab that says, I need you to put Uriah in the hottest fighting and leave him so that he will die. So Uriah delivers his own death sentence to Joab. So Joab does. From the order of David, Joab leads an entire unit further in than they should have been up against the castle wall where people can throw and shoot down upon them and they lose a lot of people. So it wasn't just Uriah that dies, but that was the intention.

Others die as well. He draws back once Uriah is dead and Joab says to a messenger, you need to go tell David what happened. And when he says, how foolish was it for you to get that close to the wall? Don't you know that they would have killed you, that they would have shot down on you, that that's a bad tactic? When he says that, you need to respond, yes, we do know and Uriah is also dead. So the messenger goes to David, tells him this.

David says, go back and tell Joab that a lot of people die in war. To not be stressed out by this, it's okay. After Bathsheba mourns, David takes her as his wife, brings her to the palace and we're told at the end of chapter 11 that the thing David did displeased the Lord. That David, who God had taken from shepherding sheep and made a king and placed him in the palace and given him honor and wealth and power and David uses it and abuses it for adultery, rape, murder and then thinks he's gotten away, Scott free. We don't even understand at this point if David even feels bad or if he's just like, good, my plans worked.

That's that. So then we're told in chapter 12 that God sends Nathan the prophet and Nathan the prophet goes to the king and the prophets spoke on behalf of God and they had a lot of authority and so Nathan shows up and says, king, I need your wisdom on something. I need you to sort a case out for me. I need you to judge between two men and your kingdom. This is a normal thing so David says, what is it? So Nathan tells him this story.

Nathan says, king, in your kingdom there's a man who's very wealthy. He has lots of herds, lots of flocks, lots of sheep. He's just a wealthy guy. He's got a nice house and he lives next to a man who is not wealthy. This man who lives near him kind of in the shadow of his great mansion, his great fields and kind of lives in the shadow there. There's a man who lives and he has one sheep and he loves the sheep like it stays in his house, it plays with his kids, it's like a child to him, like he feeds it from his own hand.

This is like his best friend sheep and the rich man had a friend come in from out of town and he wanted to honor that friend and fix him a meal but he chose not to slay any of his own sheep but rather went because he was wealthy and powerful to the man who was his neighbor, took his one sheep and killed it to feed his friend. And I need you to help me understand what we need to do. And the text tells us in 2 Samuel chapter 12 that David is furious. That as a shepherd he understands what it's like and he just, he loses it. He stands up and says, this thing shall not be done. He will pay back fourfold and he just starts going off and in the middle of this Nathan looks at him and says, you're the man and you did exactly this when you took Bathsheba. it says David stops cold and he says, I've sinned against the Lord.

That he sees it clearly. It had to be moved over here in order for him to see it but he says, I've sinned against the Lord and we're told that Nathan looks at him and says, God will not kill you. He has hidden away your sin. There's going to be consequences and those are laid out in 2 Samuel chapter 12 but he says, you're not going to be destroyed in your sin. That God's hidden it away. And for us, as we follow Jesus and as we look at Psalm 51 today, what we're trying to see is that as you walk in your life following Christ, if you are a Christian and you are trying to live a life honoring and following him, you will sin. you will fall short.

You will make decisions that at other times you would have sworn that you would never have done. I know this is true in my life. There have been some things that I have done that if you had asked me, I don't know, a month before, will you ever do this and describe the situation, I would have looked at you with absolute certainty and said, no, I would not do that. That's not who I am. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't act like that.

I wouldn't, no. Two months later, you could ask me about that event and say, did you, did you, did that bring joy? Was that a good idea? Did you, do you love that you chose this? And it's like, no, but I've sinned. I've tricked myself.

I've lied to myself. I've made terrible decisions. This is going to happen as we follow Jesus. If you are not a Christian and you are in the room, if you're here checking this out, trying to understand what the Bible says, or you, you may be life's rough right now and you're thinking, I need to, I need to grow. I need to see what the Bible talks about. I need to maybe get back in church.

You have to understand that much of your life and much of your pain is caused by sin. That, that you have sin, that you've made bad decisions. You've harmed others. You've lied. You've made bad choices and then you're, when it came to, when people were finding out your best next option, you thought was just to lie. Just to, just to hide it.

Just to cover it. We've all lived as David has, making a bad decision and then tacking on top of that bad decision after bad decision after bad decision. We need a way to respond in our sin. We need a way to move forward in our sin. And so we're going to look at Psalm 51 as we get the song that David wrote in his sin. we're going to look and see what it looks like. How, how can we move forward?

I'm going to pray and then we're going to begin walking through this text. God, we ask that by your grace your hand would be heavy on us this morning. That your presence would be felt. that by your grace and through the power of your Holy Spirit we would see your character more clearly and that our sin would be drawn into sharp focus. That the hiding and the lying would stop. And that by your grace you would pierce our hearts and wound us that you might lead us to the joy and the freedom that is found in repentance. I pray, Lord, that you would equip us for future days that what we talk about today that what we read in Psalm 51 would stick in our minds crawl into our hearts that we might have a way to respond in the future when we've been led astray when we've wandered when we've sinned.

And we ask for your grace and we ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen. The concept we're going to be talking about today is repentance. The word is not used in this text. We are actually viewing from the side repentance. We're getting to look down at David repenting.

He doesn't use the term but that's what he's doing. And repentance is not only a confession of our sin but it is us turning away from it. That repentance that is confession only is not repentance. And when you say, oh yeah, I did wrong but then you go right back into like that's not repentance. That maybe you were caught maybe you had gotten to the point where you had to be honest about what was going on but repentance involves life change. And that's what we're looking at today that we turn from sin and we don't just acknowledge it.

Like that's not repentance. That maybe you were caught maybe you had gotten to the point where you had to be honest about what was going on but repentance involves life change. And that's what we're looking at today that we turn from sin and we don't just acknowledge it. So verse now chapter 51 Psalm 51 verse 1 David begins this way. Have mercy on me oh God according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy

Blot out my transgressions wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. So David says have mercy on me oh God I think whenever we use that word when we use the word mercy mercy it's a borrowed word for us but it's not a borrowed word for David. What I mean by that is we don't use that term a lot. So maybe you use it when you're praying maybe you use it because you read the Bible

Maybe but maybe you know you say Lord have mercy when something bad happens or like maybe it's in some songs you sing but there's not a whole lot of times where we've actually used the word mercy you haven't looked at someone and said please I pray be merciful like that's never been a thing you've said to someone you've never you've never looked at someone

You've never been in an argument and looked at your wife and been like am I not merciful like this never happened unless you were quoting the gladiator it's never happened like but David it's not a borrowed word he knows what it is because he's a king who led battles and here's here's how David would be understanding this when he talks about it you see mercy is what people would beg for when they had

Lost the battle that they would look at the king who now had ridden in who the person in charge so the captain or the king or whoever was in charge or the people that were surrounding them with weapons and they would say I ask for mercy it's the moment in the battle when you've laid down your arms there is no outrunning this there is no continuing to fight

The only thing you have is please please please have mercy I'm completely in your power and only will this go well based off of what you choose to do so if we had fought a battle and our side lost and there's 10 of us 20 of us 200 of us but we're

Surrounded and we raise our hands and we ask for mercy it is now based on what the king decides to do and he could say kill him that'd be the end of that there were kings in the old testament that would cut people's thumbs off and have them stand around the table and when

They were done eating they had to pick up crumbs with their fingers there were people that would have their eyes gouged out like it just it's this moment where David is saying God I can't run I can't win I have nothing to offer I have no way

To fight he's raising his hands and saying I'm asking for mercy but that's the beginning of repentance you see in our sin when we see our sin because there are times where you do not see your sin by God's grace you will but there are times

Where we do not see our sin but when we see our sin we have some ways to respond there are normal ways that people respond when they see their sin one of the ways that you'll see you respond and others respond is you just you kind of deny it

Or you justify it so yeah yeah I said that but you should have heard what she said yeah I did that but you should have seen what they did oh sure I've acted like that at work but you hadn't met my boss it's this my sin

Yeah okay kind of it's there but not really but that's a way that we respond to our sin there's the justifying or trying to pay it off it's like you sin and you see your sin you feel the weight

Of your sin and the only thing you can think is well I've got to get to work I've got to pay it back I've got to restore it I've got to make it right some

Of us see our sin and the best plan we can come up with is just to run just to try to hide so we quit talking to people in our community groups we quit talking to the people that we've

Sinned against we know we shouldn't have done what we did but we have no way to fix that so we just don't answer their phone calls yeah I shouldn't have talked to you like that but heck if I know how to go any like I guess we just aren't friends anymore like I don't know how to we do that some of us have sin

And we feel it and we know it and the best plan we've come up with is just let it crush us just let it bear down on our souls just let it be a boulder that smashes us underneath it and all of life feels like that like I will never

Get out from under the weight of the sin that this guilt this shame will be carried by me forever but David gives us another option that in our sin when we see our sin we would turn and look at God and say have mercy

Don't do to me what you could don't crush me have mercy and David says this have mercy according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin David

Throws himself against the character of God against the nature of God he says have mercy on me according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy he says be the way you say you are I'm trusting that you're good I'm trusting

That what I've heard about you what you've told us about yourself see David's pointing to places in the Old Testament where that's what God says he's abounding in steadfast love and he has mercy and forgiveness for sinners and David's saying this is what you're like for us

We have a leg up on David because we get to look to the cross where God proves doesn't just promise promise but proves that he has steadfast love and abounding mercy we get to look at him and say deal with me according to the cross where I know that you love

Me and I know that you paid for sin wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin you see we can go to God in our sin that when we see our sin we can repent we can ask

For mercy because of who he is let's keep reading verse 3 for I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight

So that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me behold you delight in truth in the inward being

And you teach me wisdom in the secret heart so David starts off in this section he says for I know my transgression my sin is ever before me David is not

Downplaying this this whole section 3 verses 3 through 6 David is just kind of saying no no no it it's all around me

I know my sin I see it clearly one of the first things we have to do in order to repent is to own

Our sin to see it to know it to name it David is not downplaying this he's not saying well I'm kind of a

Good person I just did some I made a mistake David is not going to God and have mercy on me for this accident

David is saying no no no I know my sin it's ever present with me it's real to me and against you and you

Only have I sin if you haven't noticed your sin God has he is well aware of it it is not hidden from him

And ultimately all sin is against him that's kind of an outrageous statement for David to make no no no he hasn't just sinned

Against God he sinned against his servants he sinned against Israel he sinned against his captain Joab he sinned against Uriah he sinned against

Bathsheba the list goes on and David looks at God and says my sin is against you that I had to stray from you

And run from you and hate you and rebel against you before I would ever do any of those things I have dishonored you

And then he says what I've done is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in

Your judgment what David is saying is that in my sin I see clearly how good you are and how right you are and

How true you are David is not downplaying this he is not hiding it he said I know my sin it's against you and

Then in verse five he says something that I think is helpful for us behold I was brought forth in in in in in

Sin did my mother conceive me David says this isn't just something I'm done this is part of who I am this is in

My this is in my DNA this is in the marrow of my bones I am sinful I was born sinful Paul is going to

Refer to this as us being in Adam that when Adam the first man sinned that all of us are born into sin sold

Into slavery that we're dead in our sin that this is how we begin that no one had to train us in sin it

Was born into us that there are certain things that are born into people like personality and some of those kind of things that

They have to come out and have to work on their whole life but for all of us sin is born into us you

Can't look at the globe and go yeah well you can tell Anglo Europeans they're sinful but it hadn't reached South America yet like

We can't do that it's like no there's corruption and brokenness everywhere and nobody had to teach it to you sure you had some people

Work on your technique but they didn't have to teach you how to sin you had someone tell you cuss words or whatever but

You didn't it was already in you I have a two year old we have to teach him things like how to share we

Did not have to teach him how to say mine he just picked that up on his own I actually learned now that he

Only uses the word share when I have a thing he understands the concepts of turns if you have something but when he has

It it it doesn't really apply to this sharing is kind of a foreign concept I have seen him places and watched him we

Go to hang out with other children and other families that have kids and he'll see a toy that he likes and he'll pick it

Up and he won't put it back down and do you know why he understands in his little brain this actually doesn't belong to

Me and if I put it down there's a good chance it won't get to belong to me but if I hold it forever

It'll make it to my house and then it will belong to me I didn't have to teach him that do you know how

Often we're at doors and we're like okay put that down put that down say thank you for like no like you hoping we

Didn't see it we didn't have to teach this to him I read I heard about an article recently where they did a study

Where they found out that your cat that you have at your house if it was big enough would eat you that was the

Study they did you can look it up that's what they discovered they discovered that your cat is a predator week it dawned on

Me that that is true for toddlers he would not eat me but I would have to fist fight him over everything currently the only

Thing that works in our house he's not reasonable the only thing that works in our house is I'm way bigger than he is but it's already

In him to want to defy and want to fight and want to argue he did something he was supposed to do I picked

Him up I popped him on his leg and he hit me in the side of the head and some of you were like

Well you taught him to strike first okay maybe a little bit but no not really because we have kid city last last week just

So y'all know we had 30 children here which is amazing and we're thankful to Jesus for it that we just got new volunteers

And new rooms and stuff because otherwise all of our kid city volunteers would just be quitting because we had 30 children here last week

You know what we have in our kid city handbook bite protocol what we have to do when your sweet little angel bites another

Child and you know what we've never done when your child has bitten another child we've never come to you and said we think

You should stop doing bite punishment at your house you did not train them they had teeth and were angry they put it together

Themselves I've never thrown a wooden train at my son when I was angry he picked that up on his own David is saying

I know my sin you know my sin and let's be real this is in me he's saying it's not that I'm a sinner

Because I've sinned I'm sinning because I'm a sinner this is who I am I was conceived this way I was born this way

This has been a part of me and David is going to God and as honestly and openly as he can be he's not

Hiding he's not holding back he's not saying a little bit or kind of like this or he is as clear as he can

Saying God without you without your mercy I'm in trouble he says behold in verse six behold you delight in truth in the inward

Being and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart what he's saying is that God you at the deepest most real level you

Want to change me and for some of you for some of us who've been good you're really good at using the right phrases

And you're really good at saying the right words and you're really good at and I just want to be real clear with you

You can you can fool everyone in your community group but by God's grace and goodness towards you you cannot fool him he knows

Your inner being and your secret heart and David is owning up to that before God and he's saying you delight in truth and

You teach me wisdom you go to work on the deepest most real part of me we have to as Christians become students of

Our own sin he says I know my transgression my sin is ever before me we have to become students of our own sin

What I mean by that is you need to know yourself you need to know your proclivities you need to know what you are

Led into you need to be able to look at your community group and say hey guys I'm an accountant and we're coming into tax

Season and let me tell you what's going to happen when I get stressed usually I like to look at spreadsheets and crunch Numbers all day long and then

I go home in the evening and enjoy a nice glass of red wine and I'm going to quit answering phone calls and I'm

Going to quit hanging out with our group and then I'm going to show back up a couple months from now and try to

Recruit and I need you around me some of you need to be able to say hey guys October is coming up and it's

A hard month for me every year in October I get depressed because of some things that happened in my life and some situations

And family members and here's the good version of me loving Jesus and being depressed being sad and mournful but loving Jesus and here's

The sad depressed running from Jesus version like we need to be a student of our own sin that we can look at people

And say here's where I need you here's when I need you to because we believe verses 3 through 6 that we are sinners

That you do have sin I have never once met a couple that came through our doors and it's like oh look Michael and

Sarah and I've never thought well I hope they're the first people to join our church who haven't sinned yet they'll bring our average

Up never thought that I can tell you things about them I've never met them you want me tell you something about Michael and

Sarah they're messed up there's something wrong with them they do some petty stuff they got problems it's because we're sinners in need of grace and as

Christians we are going to sin and we need a way to respond and it's to run to God like David has and ask

For mercy and wash me and I shall be whiter than snow so he he's referring to when he says purge me with hyssop

He's referring to some of the ceremonial things that happened in the Old Testament law specifically we're going to refer to a section in

Leviticus 14 I'm just going to tell you how that works hyssop was a branch and so when you had leprosy this is laid out

In Leviticus 14 when someone had leprosy which was a skin disease that made you not be able to be around anyone else it

Was catching so that if you had it you could give it to others until you eventually had to go away and you would

Slowly rot away fall apart and die that leprosy worked the extremities would work its in your skin would die and your sensation would

Die and eventually because this was dead it would just fall off and you would have to announce that you were lepers and there

Were whole leper colonies but if your leprosy began to go away you could go present yourself to the priest and they would take

Two birds and a bowl of clean water and they would kill one of the birds and drain its blood into the bowl and

They would dip the second bird in some hyssop which is a branch in that and they would sprinkle you with the hyssop seven times

And then they would let that bird go free what David just said in verse seven prophetically as he pointed back to the Old Testament law

And as he pointed forward for us he said I need the gospel you see we have that in Christ we have the ability

To go to God and say I need to be sprinkled with the blood so that I can be clean and I can be

Welcomed back I need see Jesus died was laid in the grave and his blood covers our sin but he also rose and ascended

The bird can't do that that's why they need two of them Jesus can he can die and fly away he can die and

Rise and what happened was David is saying I need you to sprinkle me with the blood and wash me with the water and

For those of us who are in Christ we get to go to God in our repentance when we see our sin and we

Don't go to him saying I failed and I don't know what to do I I failed and once again I need your mercy

I need the blood from the cross and I need the covering from my baptism when I was buried in death with you and

Rose again to life I need the water and the blood to cover me and then I'll be clean and I'll be whiter than

Snow verse 8 let me hear joy and gladness let the bones you have broken rejoice let me hear joy and gladness let the

Bones you have broken rejoice there's a proverb in the book of Proverbs that said it's better better are the blows of a friend than

The kisses of an enemy and David is going to God and saying thank you for breaking some of my bones so that I

Could see my sin you broke me and let that be a joy to me let me limp with joy for my life as

I know that you did that because you love me and you were going to let me run away and be happy in my

Sin and there's a joy in repentance I want to show y'all this is from Psalm 32 David says blessed is the one whose transgression is

Forgiven whose sin is covered blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity that's sin and in all day long for day and

Night your hand was heavy upon me my strength was dried up as by heat of the summer keep that up for just a

Second we often convince ourselves that hiding our sin is the best route and it is exhausting and it dries our bones up and

We groan under the weight of our sin and what David is talking about is the joy that comes from repentance that comes from

Owning our sin and being honest about it and real about it and celebrating the truth of the gospel of God's grace towards us

That there is joy in repentance I've had conversations with people not in our church before that they'll say well if y'all believe in

Grace why y'all talk about repentance so much it's like yeah yeah because we believe in grace repentance is us celebrating grace it's us

Enjoying the grace that we're offered you see that we are sinful so we get to repent and that's where grace comes in that

God pays for our sin that we don't pay our own debt it's not about our morality or our goodness that the more we

See our sin the more we enjoy the grace of Jesus and his greatness and that's what iniquities hide your face from my sins

And blot out all my iniquities I remember being in elementary school I don't remember what grade it was I did have a pen

So they don't give those like you what third grade you graduate to pens like when you're in like kindergarten they give you that

Pencil that's like the size of a stick they don't give you pens for a while though so I had a pen I remember

That and I had zoned out and I remember this moment of absolute clarity where I was sitting and I looked down at my

Paper and I had written the name of a girl like three times and when I realized that had happened I was terrified because

If anyone saw that like that that will ruin you in third grade I don't like and so what I did was I took my

Pen and I rewrote other words over top bared down real hard rewrote other words over top because this is a great way to

Cover some of it you can find out what it said so I rewrote some other words over top of them real quick and then

I scribbled this way and this way now I probably look psychotic and if you came by my paper later you would be like

There is something wrong with this kid and this was before they gave children ADD medicine all the time but I'm sure my teacher was

Like I'm going to make notes of this because she saw he is not learning math I don't know what's going on with him talk to

His parents but then my paper was blotted out you see when David says this they didn't have erasers he's saying I need you

To go to the ledger I need you to go where you have David son of Jesse written and where next to it you

Have adulterer and where next to that you have murderer and thief and liar and the person who like when you write all this

Out prideful wicked I need you to blot it out I need it to be covered so that when someone pulls up David son

Of Jesse and looks at the sheet of paper they don't know what was written there and you see for us we get to

Ask the same thing in Christ I need you to take what was written where my sin is and I need the blood of

Jesus to you are free to go the file has been corrupted we have nothing to hold against you you are free to go

That is what we need next to our name where it would say liar thief addict abuser all of these things that they would

Be covered and blotted out create in me a clean heart oh God verse 10 and renew a right spirit within me cast me not away from your

Presence and me restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit you see when we go to God we need

To ask for the gospel to cover us that our repentance would be based off of his sacrifice that he would restore to us the joy of repentance and that he would go to work on the

Inside of us that he would blot out our sin and go to work on the inside of us that's where he says create in me a clean heart

And renew a right spirit within me David's not just saying I need my past taken care of he said I need you to

Take care of my future too I need you to go to work on my heart so that I'll be different make me new on

The inside and then keep me there that's where verse 12 restore to me the joy of your salvation make me new bring me back and then

Uphold me with a willing spirit keep me there verse 13 through 17 he kind of lays out what will happen when that happens

He says then when you've done that when you've wiped away my sin when you've restored me when you've made my heart new then

I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you I love that because that is true you want to tell other

People that this is how God responds this is how he Acts this is how he treats us in our sin often I find

When they say that you know this many people in the Christian church hadn't shared their faith with anybody over the past however many

You know nobody hadn't told anybody about Jesus this past year that kind of stuff it's like yeah because they I'll start telling everybody

Because that's how it works delivered me from blood guiltiness oh God oh God of my salvation and my tongue will sing aloud of

Your righteousness that's us every Sunday morning that we've been delivered from our guilt by Jesus and we sing to Jesus about his righteousness

Oh Lord open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it

You will not be pleased with a burnt offering the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart oh God

You will not despise maybe says you don't want to sacrifice for me you don't want work for me I can't pay you back

I have nothing to offer you says the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart build up the walls

Of Jerusalem then you will delight in right sacrifices in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings then bulls will be offered on your altar

So what David says is you don't want an offering you want humility but once you've changed me then you'll want sacrifice then you'll

Want work and for us that's we don't come to God and work beforehand to be saved to pay back our debt that we're

Saved based off of coming to God in repentance and humility and then God delights in your work God delights in your service because

He's the one empowering it because it's not you're not serving so that you'll be okay you're serving you're sacrificing because of how good he

Is not to pay him off but to delight in him and so he delights in your work as we close out this morning

We're going to have a chance to respond it's maybe a little bit different than some mornings but I think helpful for us look back at verse

16 And 17 for you will not delight in sacrifice or I would give it you will not be pleased with a burnt offering

I hope that verse crushes some of us this morning for those of you in the room who think that the role of Christianity in

Your life and in the life of others is to sacrifice and to do good and to be moral to guard your soul and

To act right and then God will delight in you David just said no for those of you this morning who have seen your

Sin and said okay I gotta pay it back I gotta work really hard I gotta be a good person and then God will

Like me David says no that's not how it works that will not work he will not delight in it if you are here

To do some sort of penance and to deliver to God some form of good work some form of morality some form of church

Attendance let this be very clear he does not delight in that you have presented him nothing but verse 17 should bring great hope

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart oh God you will not despise those of you in

This room who have seen your sin and are broken over it hear the words of David God does not despise that God does

Respond to that he does delight in that for us to have a broken spirit and a broken heart some of you you see

Your sin and you know I can't pay this back I'm crushed by it I'll never get out from under this I'm destroyed by

It I have nothing to offer to God David says take your broken heart to him lay out before him just as I have

And say God I need mercy and my sin clings to me and it's ever before me and I was born like this and

I can't fix myself and I need you to blot it out and I need you to change me and David says when we

Do that God stoops and he welcomes and he wraps us up and he does not despise that that that's the sacrifice that you

Would humbly submit yourself before him in the midst of your sin in a minute we're going to take communion together but before that we're

Going to have a time where we get to sit and repent where we get to collectively as a church ask God for mercy in

Our sin some of you right now are untouched by this this has been maybe interesting to see what David went through and you're going to

Need to ask that God help you see your sin help you see where you've run from him where you've gotten so cold to

Him that you've grown so used to your sin that you don't even notice it anymore so we're going to pray three things here in a

Second we're going to ask that God would help us see his character that he'd help us see the cross we'd see his holiness and

His mercy and his love and then we're going to pray that he'd help us see our sin and hate it and then we're going to

Pray like David blot it out and make me new renew me keep me and if you are in this room and you have never placed

Your faith in Jesus you want to you want to you want to have him pay for your sin and make you new that

You can be forgiven and you can be welcomed and you can be loved and you can be renewed that you can come to

Him right now and fall on your knees like at the end of a battle when you have no other options you can say

Have mercy on me and he does that he has died for our sins and he does have love and he is merciful all

The and it doesn't matter what you've done in your past or what's happened to you or what marks you or what you think

On the paper underneath your name that his blood can blot it out and you can be forever free so if you've never fully

Mentally intentionally committed yourself to Jesus and said I need you to pay for my sin because I have no other options and I

Need you to forgive me and have mercy on me you can do that right now and then in a moment you can stand

Up and you can take communion as a Christian for the first time and truly celebrate that his body was broken for you and

That his blood was shed for you and that forever when God looks at you all of your sin will be blotted out by

The blood of Jesus and you will be covered and if you have done that I would encourage you to repent today from the

Sin that you have allowed to grow up that you have been hiding and go as a Christian take communion one more time and

Celebrate the fact that we have a great God and father who loved us so much that his son died for us that our

Sin could be forever and that he would cover us and renew us so right now for a moment we're just going to sit

And have a chance to pray and then we'll get to respond through communion and singing and celebrating but let's pray together God I

We come to you and we ask that our sin would not be hidden from us because it's not hidden from you we ask

That in your grace you would show us our sin where we've rebelled where we've run that you would hem us in and your

Hand would be heavy on us that we might bend and repent and ask for mercy and God we pray that people would run

As fast as they possibly could to you today and that people in this room who never placed their faith in you would and

Would be forever welcomed and covered by Jesus

The Problem of Two Kings

The Problem of Two Kings

Chet Phillips

Download

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.