Two Kingdoms
Transcript
It's good to see y'all this morning. My name is Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. This is the first week of our Give Series. And so every time around this time of year, as soon as Thanksgiving's over, we have a Give Series where we intentionally give money away. So Merry Christmas.
This is a wonderful time of year. Here we are meant to celebrate well. We're supposed to. One of the things in the Old Testament that I was thinking about a good bit from Thanksgiving and into this time of year, one of the things about the Old Testament that God commanded His people to do was to save money so that they could help the poor, so that they could take care of the priests and the temple who did not have an inheritance among them, but they were supposed to take care of the Acts of worship and what they were supposed to do as a nation, and they were supposed to save money so that they could celebrate.
There were times where they were supposed to spend money to feast, to enjoy the good things that God had given them, to celebrate how He had blessed and provided. And as we go into Christmas, this is one of those times where we get to do that. And Christians ought to celebrate, well, we should have some of the best food and some of the best parties. You should gain some weight. You'll lose it in January. I believe in you.
Look, I'm a Carolina fan. Good things always happen in the future. We'll get it together. It'll be nice. January us is going to crush this. Right now, let's eat some food and celebrate.
We're meant to do that, but the danger for us is that we would get so caught up in that, so caught up in the things that are right in front of us, what is tangible, what we can see, that we would lose the thread. We would lose that our celebration is meant to help us look upward. It's meant to roll up in praise. It's meant to help us see beyond the horizon. It's meant to celebrate something of great significance that has an eternal aspect to it. And if we lose that, then our celebration becomes very dull.
It's very earth-centered. It's just here and now, and we miss the point. And so in that tension, we always as a church have had a gift series where we intentionally try to celebrate well while reminding us and remembering together that we are eternal people with an eternal purpose and we want to give some money away. Rather than just having it all terminate here, we want to send some on ahead. We want to live as eternal people. And so we ought to celebrate well and we ought to be generous and give and remember the eternality of this season.
And so that's our hope as we do this, that we would help walk that tension well and that we would celebrate well and walk generously, live generously. And I didn't mean to just give all those t-shirts a shout out, but we would live as generous people as we move forward together. So I'm going to pray and then we're going to talk about this section of text we're getting to look at today. Lord, we pray that you would bless us as your people, that we would take this time to celebrate well. This would be a season of joy, of welcoming one another, of hospitality, of enjoying the good food, the good time that we get to have.
And we pray, Lord, that it would be a season of generosity, that we would not get so focused on what is right in front of us that we would miss the point. And so may we celebrate well and may we live well in generosity with an eternal hope in mind. We pray that as we study this scripture today, that you would help us grow in that and that you would bless this gift project that we're going to get to focus on this year. In Jesus' name, amen. Turn to Matthew chapter 2. So what we did, we're working through the book of Matthew.
We just skipped Matthew 1 and 2. When we started, we started in Matthew chapter 3 and we're going to look at Matthew 1 and 2 for the next four weeks as we celebrate Christmas because these are more Christmassy type passages. They deal with the birth of Jesus. And so rather than doing them first and then hitting Christmas again, we just said, we'll save that. We'll start. We'll do it out of order.
Some people probably appreciated that and some of you are probably frustrated by it. But now, Matthew 1 and 2 for the next four weeks. Today we're going to look at King Herod. Then we'll look at Joseph. Then we'll look at the wise men.
And so we'll read through some of the same passages together, repeatedly focusing on different areas. And hopefully it'll help us celebrate well and push us towards generosity. In C.S. Lewis' book, The Silver Chair, there's a prince named Prince Rillion. And he is captured by a witch who can also turn into a snake or a snake who also turns into like a beautiful enchantress witch lady. He's captured and she takes him underground.
So he was supposed to be the prince. He was eventually going to be the king over this wonderful kingdom that is joyous and welcoming and at peace that has good relationships between all the people. He was going to be the king over this kingdom. But he's captured and she enchants him so that he no longer knows who he is and he begins to serve her and she takes him underground and they begin to build an underground army. And the plan is with the underground army, dig a big tunnel, pop up in the middle of the kingdom that he would have been king over and overtake it. So he's actually working to try to conquer a kingdom that would have been freely given to him because he's lost who he is.
And there's this tension between this kingdom of darkness, this underground kingdom that's trying to conquer this kingdom of light, this kingdom that lives out in the sun and this story unfolds. They have to send some people to go try to find him and get him back. And as I read this, I realize that this has a lot of similarities to the actual world that we live in and what we meet in the scriptures as the Lord tells us what this was supposed to look like, that we were meant to be sons and daughters of the king, that we were meant to live at peace with one another, that he was going to freely give us all good things to enjoy and that we've been tricked. That the enemy of God, Satan, has blinded our eyes so that we only focus on what we can see and we actually fight, claw for what God would freely give us.
And we try to, as best we can, defend our own little territory and claim our own little kingdom. We're blind, we're living in a kingdom of darkness, and we're fighting for what God has openly, freely invited us into. And there's these two kingdoms that are at war. There's this kingdom that can only see what's right in front of it, and there's this kingdom that's meant to be more. And we're actually getting to look at some of that play out today as we look at two kings and how they interact with one another. So, Matthew chapter 2.
We're going to look at these two kingdoms and these two kings. And hopefully, as we look at this together, we will see that we get to make a choice, that we get to choose which kingdom we're going to live in and which king we're going to follow. Verse 1. Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men came from the east, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. All right, so they come to Jerusalem where the king is.
Jesus is born in Judea in the area that the king Herod had jurisdiction. It's really interesting. He's born into the Roman Empire under the jurisdiction of the emperor and king Herod. Now, king Herod was ruthless and very politically savvy. He's one of the only people who in the Roman Empire gets to have the title of king. Most of them get titles like governor.
They get a title that clearly says they're underneath the emperor Caesar. And Herod gets the title king because he's politically savvy and he's ruthless. And the Jewish people were hard to manage and so the Romans were capitulating a little bit because they were having consistently difficult times with the Jewish people. And so, King Herod was an Edomite related to the Jewish people but not fully Jewish. So, when he wanted to make his run for king, he wanted to get this power from the Romans, he married a lady who was from the Maccabees. None of this is in the scripture.
I'm just giving you some background on here. When he did, when he married her, he got rid of his current wife and son. Just got rid of them so that he could move forward. after a time of being married with this lady, married to this lady, they had sons. She was well-liked, was growing in power. The sons were well-liked and were growing in power and so he eventually, over time, had her put to death and had his two sons put to death because he did not want to have anyone try to take away from him his position and he felt like his sons were a threat. Now, can you imagine that?
That he so could only see what was right in front of him that he had no desire for his sons to have a throne after him or for him to manage that well. He just saw everyone around him as a threat. He killed two of his sons. As he got older and sicker, seven days prior to his death, he had another one of his sons put to death. So he eventually killed three of his sons.
The emperor Augustus actually made a joke and it's funnier in Greek because it's a play on words. But I don't know Greek and most of you don't either. So I'm going to say it in English where it's not a play on words. But he says it would actually be better to be Herod's pig than his son. Because Herod's Jewish so they wouldn't have eaten a pig. But his sons were in danger.
So he said he'd rather be his pig than his son. Those words are similar in Greek. So he was ruthless. And so they come to him. And this is the king that Jesus is born under. They come to him.
The wise men come to him. They come to J. And it says, verse 2, saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and we have come to worship him. Okay, so it says wise men from the east. These weren't just like smart people.
Wise men was kind of this class of people that would have been kind of around a throne usually that would have given a consult to a king. So they're probably wealthy. They bring very good gifts which indicates that. So they most likely rode up on horses or camels. They were an entourage. They show up.
They go to the palace and they say, Where is the king who has been born? And Herod's like, You're 50 years late. Here I am. It took you a long time to get here. I'm the king. Like, he's the only king he knows of.
And so he, it says that they come to him and they say, Where is the king who's been born? King of the Jews. We saw his star when it rose. Meaning they studied the sky and they're saying creation has actually put on display that this king has come. Now if you know anything about Herod, you can imagine how excited at this news he was.
When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. I think had they had a better king, Jerusalem maybe wouldn't have been troubled. But when Herod's troubled, everybody's going to be troubled. But all of them are stirred up. What does this mean? Herod's troubled.
And it says this, And assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So he calls the people who study the Old Testament and he says there are prophecies about this. They said they've seen his star. They've said the king of the Jews has been born. Where is he supposed to be born? His immediate assumption is this is the Christ, the Messiah, the promised one, the one who God's been saying over and over would come in the line of David who would set up a kingdom that will last forever.
This is the one who's coming. So he calls together his book reading, Bible studying friends says, tell me where he's supposed to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, 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.
That's surprising. That's an excellent response. So King Herod hears that the Messiah has been born and he gets together. The scribes, the people who have studied the Bible said, where is he to be born? He tells the wise men, go find him. When you find him, come let me know because I want to worship him too.
That's how a king ought to respond if you're the king of the Jews and the Messiah is born. You ought to understand who he is, understand who God is and say, my role now is to help facilitate this and make this go well. Seems very out of character for Herod but good for him. Verse 9, 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. When they saw the star they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshipped him.
They saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshipped him. Then opening their treasures they offered him gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod they departed to their own country by another way. So God steps in and says don't go talk to Herod. Now when they
Had departed behold an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph that's Jesus' adoptive father we'll spend some time talking about him next week in a dream and said rise take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. I knew it!
When I went to college my younger brother got really into the TV show Mari and my parents had Teva and when I would come home he would have saved sections of his highlight reel of Mari shows and he would like have written down and he would have certain ones he wanted me to watch and so in college I got really into the TV show Mari I couldn't just say
That I had to blame it on my brother first but in Mari they do two things they do paternity tests which are always delightful to watch and they also do lie detector tests and so he'll read the results and so when Herod says this you can almost hear Mari saying the test confirmed that was a lie you had no intention of worshipping Jesus he just wanted to know where he was so that he could destroy him
Now follow the logic here let's think with Herod here for a second wise men come from another country and they tell you that the stars have moved and said king of the Jews has been born maybe you don't understand how they go about figuring that out I wouldn't but that's what they say we've come because we saw a star we're here to worship the king of the Jews
Now you don't know anything about this you don't know that there's been a king born you have no desire for this Herod's thinking okay I don't want another king I want to defend my kingdom I mean he wants to defend his kingdom so much so that he'll kill his own children like he then he thinks okay well if creation's involved probably
The promised Messiah from the Old Testament that God creator of the world has been telling us forever he was going to send so he calls together the scribes he says where is the Christ supposed to be born and his plan is kill the Messiah that's his plan it would make sense to me if he just thought this is nonsense like if it just said
He thought no don't know who that is like it would make sense to me if he just rejected it but he actually believes enough to say search the books tell me which city the Christ is supposed to be born in he understands enough to say this is actually the Christ this is actually the Messiah if the stars are involved it's him and then his plan is to defend his kingdom against creator of the world
Not a good plan that's his plan that's surprising to me but that's what he comes up with that's what he's going to do 14 and he rose that's Joseph and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod this was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet out of Egypt
I called my son just a quick tag we're going to spend more time on Joseph and the wise men in the coming weeks so I'm skipping a lot of things here because we're just focusing on Herod so if you're really interested in that come back we'll talk about it in the next couple weeks then Herod when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men became furious I mean it is in their name
They're wise so you should have seen it come and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and all that region who were two years old or under according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah a voice was heard in Ramah weeping in loud lamentation Rachel weeping for her children she refused to be comforted
Because they are no more so he sent to Bethlehem and the surrounding area and anyone any child that had not hit their third birthday any male child that had not hit their third birthday he had executed in our church family that would be eight children that area is not Bethlehem was not a big city it was not a huge area that it was covering but we're talking probably
In the 30 range and I can't even imagine someone coming to my home by presidential decree hand your son over I got a son who hadn't hit two yet he would be included in this he sent through an entire area and just slaughtered infants to protect his kingdom that's heinous it lines him up with Pharaoh who was doing this
To the Jewish people it's wicked but all he can see is the defense of what is right in front of him the enjoyment of what is right in front of him holding on to his power holding on to his position and having what he can see and touch and feel and he'll go to any length he can to keep it verse 19 and on says that when Herod died an angel came told Joseph they could go back
And they go back and there's two kings in this story and there's two kingdoms in this story and we've been reading ahead so we know what Jesus is going to be like and the type of kingdom he's going to have we've got King Herod and his earthly kingdom that he's doing anything he possibly can to defend and we've got Jesus who's a much better king with a much better kingdom Jesus comes and he starts to teach his disciples
About the kingdom of heaven and he talks about who's welcome who's brought in the weak the mourning those who are broken and hurting and far from God they're welcomed they're brought in we actually see as Jesus goes to the cross that he who was king who was ruling gave up his throne
So that we might have life and you have Herod who will take your life so that he might have his throne we have Jesus who will give up his position so that he can join us be crucified for us to welcome us in and Herod who will
Defend his position no matter what it costs you see Jesus consistently talks to his disciples and tells them to look beyond the horizon tells them to look to what they cannot see what is not right in front of them because
He is the king of heaven an eternal kingdom where there's joy where there's hope where there's life where there's fullness where there's all the good things we were meant to have and Herod's just fighting for what he can have right now and we get to
Choose because it's easy right now the kingdom of Herod and the posture of Herod see I read this and I think I'm not like Herod because that's the easiest thing to think I'm not like that I wouldn't do those things
But the reality is I'm closer and you're closer to being like Herod than we'd care to admit because it's very easy for us to be caught up in what affects me what do I enjoy what harms me what will mess with
My life and the good things that I have and let me defend it I think if you'd look back at some of my prayers and some of your prayers they're pleading with God to not mess with our territory to not
Take from us what we feel like he owes us to not encroach upon us that at some points we're actually talking to God and fighting against God in some ways the way that Herod was whoa whoa whoa whoa
Don't mess with that this is my zone that it's really easy for us to get caught up and worried about what we can grab and what we can have now and to miss what we're invited into to go back
To the story I told at the beginning we're we're the prince who can be tricked into fighting for what would be freely given to us who can be tricked into
Living a small underground life in the darkness with the hopes of tooth and nail clawing out what Jesus came to offer life joy hope position freedom fullness it's what Jesus talks
About one of the places Jesus talks about this a lot is money it's our gift series surprise do you know I was going to get the money do you see it coming Matthew Jesus talks about this in Matthew 6 he's talking about money he's talking
About possessions he's talking about how we treat what is in front of us how we treat our lives and he says this do not lay up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal alright how much
Are we told daily lay up for yourself treasures on earth how much are we told daily through advertisement through our own thoughts as we see other people enjoying things the goal of life the good life the hope of life the way to win at life
Is to lay up treasures on earth earth I know I sing that sweet tune to myself all the time look at somebody oh that'd be nice wouldn't it be good if one day one day I'm gonna have
One day we'll we'll get one day that's the hope treasures on earth I could just have this Jesus just flat out says don't do that moth and rust destroy herod was was the
King of this because he did not even want to leave a legacy or a lineage to his children we at least can see beyond our last
Breath most of the time most of the time people who are laying up treasures for themselves are like my kids can have it when
I'm gone here is like nope because I think they're going to try to enjoy it while I'm here I just want everything to be
Great until I'm gone I read this week studying up on Herod and one of the last decrees he gave was that his military
Would go through the area of his jurisdiction when he died on the day of his death would go through the area of his
Jurisdiction and kill every first born son because he thought it was likely people would be happy if he died and so he said
Go kill every first born son he died they did not do that because it was crazy but that was his plan but we
In the spirit of Herod can get caught up in what can I have now what can I enjoy now what makes life good
Now that's the point Jesus says don't do that isn't it refreshing how clear Jesus is on stuff were you thinking about doing that
Yeah don't do that all that stuff is going to fail you you ever get something new you ever have like a really old
Ratty couch and the only thing that bothered you about it was that it looked gross maybe like it was real gross and you were
A little embarrassed by it you ever get a new couch and now you're stressed out over defending your couch like it's like either way like I have a ratty
Couch I don't want my guest to sit on that now I have a new couch well you can sit on it but you
Better sit on it right and don't go plopping down on it and put that a new TV you also probably need to go ahead and
Get a fire stick or a Roku or whatever because it was fine to have the little antenna sticking up behind your old TV I bought
My wife some mums and after I bought her some mums mums are flowers people seem confused I bought her some mums and after I
Bought some mums she was like we need to get a stand book there's a book called if you give a mouse a cookie
And it's about how said I'm gonna write a book called if you buy your wife some mums because I bought some $10 mums
It cost us like $60 it was the craziest thing that's how it is those mums are dead in my backyard now it's okay to have
Some enjoyment of things I'm not saying that it's wrong but he's saying don't have your treasure here that's some king hered stuff but
Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys where thieves do not break in and steal for where your
Treasure is there will your heart be also can I tell y'all a beautiful story a better story king hered finds out that the
Messiah is born and he says I'm king for such a time as this let's pave the way for the messiah let's do everything
We possibly can let's find him let's protect him let's get him ready if he's going to be the king of the Jews let's
Make a plan here and he moves out of the way and then one day when Herod dies he's welcomed into that messiah's kingdom
And he's offered freely everything he would have fought for that's a better story it's not the one we get but right now we're getting to
Decide where are we going to be which story are we going to be a part of are we going to lay up treasures here that are nice here they're nice
No doubt about it probably nicer in our day and age than any other time I read about King Solomon in the Old Testament it
Says that the Queen of Sheba came and visited him and it says there was no other time in Israel's history where there were
Spices in Jerusalem like when Solomon was there after Sheba came and I'm like I can get on every once in a while I
Sit at my house and I think Solomon would have loved to have these digs they're nice and we can enjoy them and they're
Meant to be enjoyed as we look at a good God who is above us at a horizon that is beyond the one we
Can see we're meant to see an eternity and put some hope in an eternity and be welcomed into the place where our heart
Has been all alone you're supposed to give your heart to Jesus give it to his kingdom and when you die meet Jesus and
Meet the king who owns your heart in the kingdom where your heart has been all alone that's what he says lay up for
Yourself treasures in heaven because where your treasure is there your heart will be that's true and we can send things ahead through sacrificing
Not in the way that we used to have to appease the way the sacrifices worked where you were appeasing to try to atone for your sin no but just giving
Some things up he talks in this section in Matthew 6 he talks about praying where nobody gets to see you he talks about
Giving where nobody knows about it he actually says it messes it up you're getting treasure on earth when you give and everybody knows
About it I'd love to see a hospital building that says hospital and you're entering in the east wing and not just the McDaniels
Owens wing because whoever does that whoever gets to give all the buildings that I went to school every building had somebody's name slapped
On it because that was the person who paid for it would be nice if it was girls dorm number two somebody was generous
Just for the sake of generosity but do you get to give without anybody knowing about it so that you're not elevated so you're
Not held up high you get to serve you get to pray you get to labor he says not even a cup of cold
Water that's given to somebody because if cold water counts kid city counts I mean that we get to serve so this time of
Year when money feels tight when there's a desire to use our finances to make everything around us good we say yeah do that
As you celebrate who Jesus is and we say don't forget we're citizens of a better kingdom and send some money on ahead move your
Treasure out from under the tree move your heart so when you meet Jesus that's where your heart will have been the whole time
We get to write a better story than King Herod wrote I get the honor of introducing our give series projects this year they're
A little bit different and we get to do something a little bit different this year than we've done in the past so I'm excited we've got a lot
Going on right now with us trying to move to Casey and so this is even more fun for us because there's a real
Part of me that was like we got a ton of things going on with Casey and a lot of things to pay for y'all been
In that building it is beautiful that we are getting to move to a facility where there's a roof and where there's space and
Where the Lord has just in some ways just promoted us elevated us because how long would it have taken us to actually pay
For a place even like that but you walk in there and you are like we got some work to do some cleaning some
Painting for those of y'all who miss the green carpet that used to be in here I have got good news for you that
Place is green green and for those of you who maybe are color blind it's brown it's nice brown but they've everything over there needs
Work part of me was like why don't we just put our efforts there and then it was like no why don't we do
What we're always supposed to do just give some stuff away just send something that doesn't have anything to do with us that we just
Get to bless and not really get to partake in we get two projects this year we don't usually do two we're doing two
And we're going to give some money a church one Sunday they are planting a church in Charlotte so we just went to them
They're part of the grassroots network we help train and send church planters they've been over at midtown getting trained up they're about to
Go out they're taking 37 people with them which sounds awesome that are going to move to Charlotte to help plant a church that's a
Way better way to plant a church than the way we did so I hardly encourage doing that method than the one we went
With worked out but it's not the best one 37 people already moving up there getting jobs trying to be missionaries in that area
And we just went and said hey how can we help you out and they said well we're going to move we're going to be groups
That's the grassroots network does that we send in leaders we send in groups people to just be missionaries in the area we're going
To do groups first and then at some point they're going to want to gather and we said okay can we help with the gathering
And they said yes so here's some gathering costs here's our plan for them like I said we got two this one's happening in
Charlotte the cool thing we're here's the plan if we can raise fifteen hundred dollars we will give them an iMac we'll give them
Fifteen hundred dollars they'll buy an iMac for their gathering so they'll be able to run some of the stuff they're going to do so
They're already being in groups on mission but when they gather together there's a few things they want to get and so if we get
Three thousand dollars we will get them an iMac and a sound board so that when they get started they already have that they'll
Be blessed with that from our church so that they can just get started and worry about spending their money in other places working
On some other things if we get five thousand dollars they will also get speakers so everything is included if you hit five thousand
It's iMac sound board and speakers because at three thousand dollars they got a sound board but nothing that sends out sound so at
Five thousand dollars that sound board does some stuff and if we're able to do seventy five hundred dollars they'll get all the music
Equipment they need we said what will it take for y'all to do a gathering and they said seventy five hundred dollars I love
That I love that they're way more worried about having groups be on mission having people be missionaries and they said when we get
Together we'll need some stuff but not a ton of stuff you'll notice they left off the lasers and the fog machine so it'll be
Good worship it won't be great but they'll have maybe they smuggled it in they just said all music equipment maybe it's in there
Maybe they got things that will shoot glitter I don't know so if we can do $7,500 you'll have the opportunity to give to
Give directly to this we can do $7,500 from our church family we will send them off with everything they need to as they
Get started and when it makes sense they'll have to find a location they'll have to pay some rent but they'll have the equipment
They need to gather together and make much of Jesus together in Charlotte and I think that's a really cool thing we get to
Do and we'll get to as we give money away give to the kingdom give to some speakers we'll never hear sound out of
Possibly that we'll never get to be a part of but we'll just get to know there's some people worshiping Jesus just like we'll
Get to worshiping all together later and we're going to help them do that that's the first one first ones in the U.S. it's
In Charlotte we're helping send out a church plant the second one is in Minya Egypt so we worked with 1040 Hope last year
To sponsor a church plant in Minya and we were actually able to raise their entire year budget plus buy tuk-tuk they came back
Later and said since we got all this covered can we get some money from our people and instead of doing a tuk-tuk can
We do a van or a bus and we said sure sounds great so they did that then we sent a team to Minya
A handful of our church family to help do a conference over there to help train and equip and encourage their the beloved of Jesus also if
You speak the language it's called habib yes nailed it it means the beloved of Jesus or those whom Jesus loves what he does
Is in Egypt it's very stigmatized frowned upon to have any kind of physical deformity anybody to be a paralytic or have any kind of
Physical deformity a lot of times Spencer was telling us this in a sermon recently that they're actually they just kind of keep them hidden family
Doesn't talk about them it's it's kind of a bad Mark on your family because people might assume that you have some kind of
Genealogy issue some kind of genetic issue and so that it's harder for you to marry off your children and it's very they're poorly cared
For and so what he does is he actively tries to find them share the gospel with their parents share the gospel with them help
Them see that they're loved by Jesus and get them to where they are cared for out in the open known about that's his
Ministry so if you show the next picture this is actually while our team was there they got to be a part of one
Of his small groups where he is they gather together they worship they share the gospel they enjoy being a part of life together
Cared for loved prayed for and the Lord is doing some really cool things there so here's what we're going to do they do
Quarterly gatherings four big events a year it is very hard for people in this situation to get around they often don't go out
They have a difficult time traveling so what they do is they do four a year where they have 3,000 to 5,000 people they
Feed them a meal they give clothes away they worship Jesus their hope is those who already know and love Jesus would have a
Place to get together and worship to get to praise out in the open together with a large group to make much of Jesus
Together their hope is they will help de-stigmatize having a disability so that more people will come out in the open and be welcomed
And get to share the gospel with them and their hope is that people who are not believers will come and they'll get to
Share the gospel with them and they're seeing some really great things 5,000 people their budget is $4,500 to get the space to have
Everything they need to have people come preach the gospel to have things to give away to welcome so we thought if we could
Pay for one of these so one time next year 3,000 to 5,000 people in Egypt would gather to praise Jesus and not have
To worry about the cost they would gather to worship Jesus they pay for two of them if we get $13,500 they'll pay for
Three of them if we get $18,000 they'll pay for four of them let's do $22,000 and tell them they gotta do an extra one
Our hope would be that we can give $4,500 to Pastor Jurgis so they can have one of these where they gather and our
Church family just got to tag in our hope would be that citizen church would gather go out send out as missionaries and when
It came time to gather they'd already have the money in the bank or they'd already have the equipment sitting somewhere they'd be ready
To roll they wouldn't have to worry about it that's our hope that's what we're praying for you're going to have the opportunity over
The next couple of weeks be here let's send our heart and our money on ahead let's pray God we thank you for your
Grace thank you for your love we pray that you'd help us to be generous as you have been generous to us that you
Gave up your life that we might have hope and forgiveness in the gospel and may all of us who are citizens of that
Kingdom live as if that were true
Palm Sunday and the Kingdom of God
Transcript
Good morning. Happy Palm Sunday. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are going to take a break from Genesis to prepare for this week. Today is Palm Sunday, as Matt said, as we've been celebrating this morning, which is the week, the day that Jesus entered into the city of Jerusalem on the week that he was crucified.
So we're going to walk through this in Luke 19, which is on page 512 in your Blue Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, please take one of those home. That is our gift to you, but we'll be on page 512 in the Blue Bibles, Luke 19. This week is called Holy Week or Passion Week because this is when the global church collectively, with the exception of Eastern Orthodoxy, but the rest of the global church pauses to celebrate the week of Easter. The week that we celebrate Jesus' climactic work, everything that has gone into his coming, we celebrate this week. That on Palm Sunday, Jesus enters into the city as we will walk through in the text today.
And then on Thursday, the church celebrates something called Maundy Thursday, which is when we celebrate the Lord's Supper that was practiced, was first instituted on that day, also foot washing. So in groups this week, we're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper and take communion. I know some of you just freaked out. We're not going to do foot washing. We're not going to do that. It has its place.
It has its meaning, but we're just not going to do it in our groups this week. So if you're scared of feet, rest easy. But we are going to take the Lord's Supper in groups this week. And then on Friday, we're going to celebrate Good Friday. And we'd love to do that here, but this space gets rented out every year. So we're going to join Midtown Fellowship downtown to celebrate Good Friday with them.
And then on Sunday, we'll celebrate the resurrection here on Easter Sunday. So go ahead and go to Luke. We'll get to that in a moment. Have you ever been so, you put so much hope in something. You so looked forward to something, and it didn't work out, and you were crushed. Like your hopes, you were left sad and dismayed.
Like I got to see this vividly on display a few weeks ago. If you aren't on Facebook and we're not friends or haven't had this conversation with you yet, I have some exciting news we're expecting. My wife is 17 weeks pregnant, and it was a surprise. But we are very excited about this blessing. This pregnancy in particular has been very, very difficult for her. All of the first trimesters of her pregnancies have been terrible.
She's been sick in all of them. But this one, this one was especially bad. She was sick multiple times a day throughout the first trimester. And there was one food that really got her through, one food that she didn't see again when she ate it, and that was Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A was a godsend to our family that got us through the first trimester. Unfortunately, in Lexington, we live in West Lexington, so we live right near Lexington High School on the back end towards Gilbert.
Unfortunately, the Chick-fil-A in the middle of Lexington, up until a few weeks ago, had been closed down for renovations. So that means that she wanted something that she could eat that she wouldn't be sick again. She had to travel all the way to the other side of Lexington, to where the one is over at Saluda Point, the one by River Bluff. She had to travel that far just to get something that she wouldn't see again. And she was very agitated by this. She was so upset that she wrote Chick-fil-A, a strongly worded email, telling them, you need to build a Chick-fil-A on our side of town.
You will make money. This is foolish. Please, please, please build a Chick-fil-A over here. And then a couple weeks ago, she saw on Facebook. Someone had taken a picture of a sign from a green field across from Lexington High School and said, the sign said, Chick-fil-A coming soon. And she was so excited.
A lot of people were. This went viral for the people that live on this side of Lexington. She got so excited that finally her hopes, her prayers had been answered. She got the kids loaded up in the car. She ran an errand. And then she went over to the field to see the sign in all of its glory.
And it was not there. It was April 1st. It was a mean, cruel April Fool's joke. And she had gotten her hopes up so much and just crushed. I called her. I was like, are you okay?
And she's like, I'm not okay. She was very, very angry. We do this. We put hope in things. Small things like this. But throughout our lives, we put hope in things.
Maybe you really hoped to get in a specific college, a specific grad school. And you were waiting for the letter to come. And you were waiting for the big package to arrive. And all of a sudden, the small letter came. And you didn't get in. Maybe it was a job that you were putting hope in, that you interviewed for, that you thought you were going to get, or a promotion that you thought that you were going to land and you got passed over.
Maybe it was a boy or a girl, someone that you were hoping that you might have a chance with. And then finally, you put yourself out there. And they rejected you and your hopes were crushed. And we do this. We do this every four years at election cycle. Some candidate stands up, makes a bunch of promises.
People get their hopes up. And they never live up to it. We do this because we are people made in the image of God, which means we bear his image. And we are people created with longing and hope. To hope in God. And what we do is, is we hope and long in other things.
We find replacements for that. And when they don't work out, we're crushed. We're going to see this on display today as we walk through this story. We're going to see this with the disciples as they are so hopeful and the people as they're so hopeful as Jesus enters into the city. So we're going to be in Luke 19.
Let me pray. And then we'll drive in. God, thank you so much that we get to celebrate this time every year that you came and the work that you did for us. God, I pray that you would help us see this story for what it is and what it points to for us. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so before we jump into the text, I want to do a little bit of background.
We haven't, we've been in Genesis, so I want to do some background of how we got to this story. But also, it's important to understand the cultural expectations that the people have when Jesus entered into the city. So for three years leading up to this, Jesus has been ministering to the whole nation of Israel. He is a celebrity. Everybody knows who Jesus is. He has his disciples.
He has crowds and followers that follow him. Everyone, he's a celebrity. He can't go anywhere without crowds coming out. He's healed hundreds. He's raised the dead. He's fed thousands with just five loaves and two fish.
He's done all these great miracles. And everyone knows who he is. There's this big expectation. And as he's doing his work, there are some promises from the Old Testament that people are looking at and saying, I think this might be the one. There are messianic promises, promises that point to the Messiah. Messiah.
And the Messiah in the Old Testament was someone who was going to come and save the people. A hero. Even a king who would come and rescue the people. And the people are looking at Jesus and his work. And they're looking at these Old Testament promises. And they're thinking, this I think is the one.
These promises were vivid. They believed in them. They hoped in them. So much so that in the decades leading up to Jesus, there were other people that claimed to be the Messiah that they put hope in. These false messiahs would come up. They would have disciples just like Jesus would.
They'd have crowds. They'd teach people. But their goal was to overthrow the Roman government. You see, in their context, the Roman government controlled the land of Israel. And the people of God hated this. They hated it.
I mean, we've spent some time in Genesis. We've seen all that went into the promise of them getting the promised land. And to see that this was controlled, this land that was promised to their ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, to see this promised land controlled by a pagan nation like the Romans, they hated it. And these messiahs would raise up and they would get the people excited and they would attempt to overthrow the Roman government. And then they would fail. And they would end up on crosses, which is the punishment for a rebel, an insurrectionist, someone who is treasonous.
And there's this longing that a messiah is going to come. But they're looking at Jesus and Jesus feels different. He's reforming all these miracles. He's doing things like Elijah the prophet, like Elisha, like Moses did in the Old Testament. He seems to be the one that is going to come and free the people. So when Jesus shows up to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, here's a little bit of what they were expecting.
That he would ride into the city triumphantly. He would come down and he would start to perform signs and miracles like he's done throughout the land. And then he would start to overthrow the Roman government. He would take Jerusalem. And then almost like Braveheart, village by village, they'd start to take the whole land of Israel, town by town, village by village, from south of Jerusalem to the north in Galilee. Jesus, the hope was, he would take the land back.
He would kick the Romans out. And it wasn't just that he was going to get the land back. The hope, if you look at the promises of the Old Testament, if this was going to be global, that Jesus was going to take over the whole world, which to them was the whole Roman Empire that spread across the globe, and that Jesus would rule and reign from Jerusalem over all of the world. All of this hope and expectation was built in to this Palm Sunday 2,000 years ago. It is the reason, as we're going to look at this, that he was so celebrated like a king on Sunday. And it's part of the reason why he was crucified like a rebel on a Friday.
They wanted Jesus to be someone he was not. They had a hope for redemption that was not his plan. But ultimately, God is going to use all of this to bring about his rescue plan. So that is all the expectation that was built in to Palm Sunday. Let's jump into verse 28.
And when he had said these things, he went on ahead going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near Bethphage and Bethany at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of his disciples. All right, so Jesus has been teaching in village to village, getting closer to the city. And now he's right before the city. Geographically, here's Jerusalem. Here's the Mount of Olives.
On the other side is Bethphage and Bethany. So he's getting closer. The people in the city are starting to get excited. They're starting to get stirred up at his arrival. So Jesus is going to prepare for his arrival.
He says, go ahead. And he sends his disciples. And this is what he says. He says, he sent two of his disciples, verse 30, saying, Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied up, on which no one has ever yet sat. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, why are you untying it?
You shall say this, the Lord has need of it. So those who were sent went away and found it just as he had told them. So he says, go to the village and bring me a colt, a colt that no one has ridden. Now we know a colt is either a baby horse or it's a baby young donkey. And we know from the context of the other gospels that what he is referring to is a young donkey. He says, go, bring me this young donkey.
And as Isaac alluded to in his reading, why wouldn't you choose a horse? If you were going to be a king that rides into a city, they were thinking he was going to come in and overthrow the Romans. Why wouldn't you choose a horse? Like a king who is on top of the hill looking down into the city, rears the horse up, rides in. That's a power play. That would really demonstrate military force.
But he doesn't. No, he chooses a humble donkey, which is so picturesque of Jesus' entire life. He came into this world humble as a babe and a stable. His whole ministry has been one of humility and that is how he is going to end this. So, he tells him to choose a humble donkey. What we're going to see as we work through this is that as he's doing these things, he's also fulfilling prophecies in the Old Testament.
He fulfills Zechariah 9.9 that says, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. Righteous and having salvation is he. Humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt the full of a donkey. So, he fulfills this.
He tells them to go. And it goes down exactly how he predicted. Verse 33. And it says, And as they were untying the colt, its owner said to them, Why are you untying the colt? And they said, The Lord has need of it. And they brought it to Jesus.
And throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. So, it goes down like he said it would. They bring the young donkey. They throw their cloaks on it. This is a sign of submission. They're submitting to Jesus.
They're saying, We are following you into the city. We've got your back. And then it begins. Verse 36. And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. And he was drawing near.
Already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest. All right. So, I really want us to picture this scene together. Years ago, I got to go on a Maymester to Israel. I got to do like three weeks there, going throughout the land, doing some studies.
And I got to spend five days in Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, it's important to understand the geography of what this would look like. So, I got a picture. This is Jerusalem. This is taken from the city. That is the Mount of Olives that sits behind Jerusalem.
So, it was a little bit bigger back in the day. That mountain has been slowly starting to erode. But you see how it sits above the city. All right. So, second picture. I took this picture from top of the Mount of Olives.
And it's looking down into the city. You see that golden dome. That is called the Dome of the Rock. That is the third holiest site in Islam. When the Islamic expansion happened and they took Jerusalem, they built that mosque right on top of where the temple used to be. So, I want you to look at that and picture a much bigger temple would have been sitting there.
The entrance to the temple would have been there. And this is why this is important. Jesus is sitting on top of the Mount of Olives. The people are at the base of this valley. They're right before the temple. And they are celebrating His coming.
They're celebrating His entry. And Jesus is looking down into the temple. That's important because to the people, He's getting ready to... He's riding directly into the temple. We know He goes into the temple. And that's where He turns over tables.
But they're seeing this. And there's this expectation that Jesus is coming into the city. He's coming into the temple. This is the place of religious power. This is the place where He's going to set up His throne. Where He's going to rule.
Where He's going to reign from. They were expecting this military victory to come in. They are missing it. They're missing it because they're not seeing it. It is symbolic. He's looking down in the temple.
The place where sacrifices are offered day and night for the sins of the people. He is going to be the final sacrifice that fulfills that entire system. There's this entire expectation. But there's this disconnect. They see Him triumphant like a king. But they fail to see what's really happening here.
But they're celebrating Him like a king. One of the things we learn from the other Gospels while we call it Palm Sunday. Is they break off palm branches. And they set them before Jesus. And palm branches are a national Jewish symbol. It's picturesque of when David would come into the city on a military victory.
And they'd have palm branches. This is all a picture of He is coming into the city. He's going to overthrow the Romans. They shout, Hosanna! Hosanna! Which is a joyous celebration.
A joyous exclamation. We know from the Messianic Psalms what Hosanna means literally is save us. Save us now. They are joyously declaring, This is the king. Come into the city and save us. This fulfills Psalm 118 that says, Save us, we pray, O Lord.
O Lord, we pray, give us success. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. That is the picture that is happening here as the Savior King rides into the city. They just can't see the other part of the prophecies. The Messianic Prophesis pointed to a Savior King, but it also pointed to one who would suffer.
That suffering was the path to kingship. But all they can see is king. All they can see is save us. They can't see the full picture. They have their minds set, hear this, on an earthly kingdom. That's what their hope is.
It's an earthly kingdom. And on Palm Sunday, they have rightfully declared, Jesus is the king of the Jews. The disciples, the people, are excited. But then we get a foretaste of what's to come. Verse 39, And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. He answered, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.
So the Pharisees are part of the religious leadership that helps rule the country. They are priests that help rule the country along with another group that makes up a council called the Sanhedrin. It's a council of religious leaders. And the Pharisees represent a big portion of the Sanhedrin. They're the ones that keep the country in order. They're the religious leaders.
And it's long before this, they'd already began to plot to kill Jesus. When Jesus comes on the scene and starts teaching and starts performing his miracles, it's not how they expected. It's not how they wanted. They do not like him. They are looking for an opportunity to kill him. And they just got a picture.
They just got something they can cling to as people are shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna. As they are declaring his kingship, they're finding some ammunition. And they look at him. And I want you to feel the venom and the arrogance of what they say to him. They say, Teacher, rebuke your disciples. Don't just silence the worship, the praise that is due to you because you are the God of the universe.
Don't just silence that praise. You need to correct your disciples. They are wrong. They need to be corrected. It's ridiculous. Part of me, when I look at this, I'm like, Jesus could easily just rightfully and justifiably so just do a Thanos snap in a minute and then the Pharisees just evaporate off screen.
Like that, that, he'd be justified in doing so. But he doesn't. This is how he responds. He says, Yeah, the disciples, these people, they could be silent. But if they're silent, the very rocks will sing my praises.
And what he just said was, is that, yes, the people could stop. But creation, that praises the Creator, will still praise me. He just said, I'm going to get my praise because I am God. And you had to know, the Pharisees' jaws just hit the floor. Because what he just said to them was crazy. I mean, see it a little bit from their perspective.
He just said something. Crazy. He just said he was God. I mean, if Matt came up here and led worship, and he started playing, and all of a sudden, he started belting out words. All the songs we sing to Jesus, he started, he like rudely pasted his name on the PowerPoint, and tried to get us to all sing praises to Matt. We would yank him off stage.
He's a big guy. It would take three of us. But we'd get him off. Because that's crazy. It would be crazy to say that if you're not God. But Jesus is God.
And he's fulfilling Psalm 66, 4 that says, All the earth worships you and sings praises to you. They sing praises to your name. And this is why when people say that Jesus doesn't believe that he's God, doesn't say that he's God, it's like you aren't reading the same Bible. Over and over, he's making declarations that he is God. C.S. Lewis says he's either a liar, a lunatic, crazy, or he sings he's God.
You can't say he's just a good teacher. He is saying he is God. And it is that truth that makes the rest of this week so baffling. That Jesus is God. If he wanted to, he could take the city in a moment. He could overturn the entire establishment.
But he doesn't. No, he does. He goes into the city. And he teaches his disciples. He teaches the crowds. As the wolves start to close in on him.
And then on Thursday night, they come from, like cowards in the night, they arrest Jesus and drag him before the Sanhedrin, before this religious council. And he lets them. The God of the universe lets them. And they drag him before this council. And they need a charge to bring him before, to bring him before Pontius Pilate, to have him executed. And you know what charge they charge Jesus with?
Blasphemy. Using, defaming the name of the Lord. Let that irony sink in. They charge the God of the universe with blasphemy. And Jesus doesn't defend himself. They let him take him before Pontius Pilate.
They bring him before Pontius Pilate. He's the Roman governor at the time. He's the one that can really carry out this execution. They can kind of wash their hands and give them to him. And they tell him about this charge of blasphemy. But Pontius Pilate doesn't care.
That's a religious matter. It's a religious dispute. The Roman government doesn't believe in your God. We don't care what you are saying. So they need to say something else.
And they take what was so celebrated on Sunday. His kingship. And they come to Pontius Pilate and they say, He says that he's the king. He's trying to undermine the rule of Caesar. Are you going to let this play? And what's happening here is a political play.
The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, needs the religious leaders, needs the Sanhedrin to keep the people in check. We know from history his governorship is being questioned at this point. That he can't keep this nation under control. So when they make this claim, he's got a really tough decision to make. And while all of this is happening, you have to wonder, where are all the people that so celebrated his kingship on Sunday? Where are the people that shouted, Hosanna!
Hosanna! Who brought palm branches out? Where are the disciples who have abandoned him? All but one. And the one who's there, we don't see anywhere where he's offering a defense. Where are they?
As Jesus is left before this kangaroo court, this disgrace of justice. And Pontius Pilate gives in. As the Pharisees change the city's chant of Hosanna! Hosanna! To crucify him! Crucify him!
And they take Jesus, and I want you to see some of the pictures here of how they mock his kingship. They take a crown of thorns, of long desert thorns, they force it on his head to mock him. The king of the universe to mock him. They take a purple robe, which is a robe of royalty, and they put it on his back that has been torn to bits, and they rip it off to cause further pain, and they put it on him to mock him. They bow down, and they mock his kingship as he suffers the most brutal punishment that the Roman government could ever devise. And they get up the hill, and they nail him to a cross, and they put a sign above his head that says, King of the Jews.
They mock the king of the universe, and like a lamb being silently led to the slaughter, as Isaiah says, he is silent. He offers no defense. And on the cross, the Savior King aspect of who he is starts to fully come into play. That on the cross, the debt of sin that the whole world accumulates, that each of us rack up, all of that is paid for by Jesus. For those of us that have trusted in him, our sin is paid for on the cross. We start to see this Savior King.
That in that moment, sinners have the opportunity to be washed clean. Those of us who are dirty in sin, Jesus, through faith, presents us as righteous and clean before God. That the full cup of God's wrath that is being poured out on Jesus in this moment, for those of us who have trusted in him, that wrath that was meant for us because of our sin gets poured out on him. He takes our place. And then this prophecy that we started in Genesis, that one day a seed would come from Eve, Jesus, and the serpent Satan would strike his heel, but ultimately Jesus would crush his head. That's happening right now.
His heel is being crushed. He is suffering for us on the cross. But right now, Jesus is crushing the head of Satan. He is crushing the work of evil and hindering the work of Satan, our Savior King on display on the cross. suffering is the path to this eternal kingdom as it comes to fruition with his death. And in the aftermath of all of this, in the aftermath of his death, Jesus' followers are crushed. Their hopes were so much tied up in Jesus.
They are dismayed. They are mourning. And you've got to ask the question, why? Why are they so dismayed? Why are they in mourning? And that is because they had a misplaced hope.
Their hope was in Jesus and his kingdom and a temporary earthly kingdom. They failed to hear what Jesus was teaching those three years, that this was bigger than that. They heard the prophecies that spoke about him as king, but they ignored the parts that said suffering was the path. And like all the false messiahs who came before Jesus, seeking to establish an earthly kingdom, they don't. They die. And the people are crushed because of it.
They are left in mourning. And here's the deal. They were right to celebrate Jesus as king. Those shouts of Hosanna, those palm branches were worthy of Jesus. They were correct. They just failed to realize that suffering was the path to an eternal kingdom, not a temporary one.
And in their staggering, in their hopelessness, Easter comes. Jesus rises and he does the one thing that all the other false messiahs failed to do before him. He conquers death and he comes back. And when he does that, he opens their eyes to the bigger kingdom that was always in plan. The eternal kingdom that was always going to come, much bigger than this temporary hope that they had so hoped in. we are just like the disciples because so much of us has so much hope in a temporary kingdom. You know how I know this is true?
Is that we can sing on Sunday Hosanna like we just did. And we can celebrate Jesus as king. We can amen all of it. and then on a Friday in the middle of the week when life hits us we are left hopeless. When the things, when the temporary things, the temporary kingdom that we hope in, that we place stock in, when that crumbles, when that fails, we are left hopeless because we are not trusting in the eternal kingdom that Jesus actually bled and died for. So the question that we are left with are left with is what kingdom are we putting hope in?
Because the reality is there's two kingdoms in this world. There's the kingdom of eternity, the kingdom of God expanding across the globe into eternity and there's this temporary kingdom of this world, of this present age. Which kingdom are we hoping in? Are we building in? Are we longing for? That's the question we're left with.
And if we're honest, some of us see Jesus as king, but really it's on our terms. It's for our kingdoms. It's for the hopes that we put in in this life. I want to walk through a few different ways I think that we do this. And as I do this, I want you to ask yourself, if I don't get blessed in these ways, am I okay? If I don't get blessings here from Jesus, am I really honestly okay?
And the first one is your wallet. is money. I mean, we as Christians, we know that we're not supposed to worship money. We'll say absolutely, no, I don't worship money. But what about the things that money gets us? What about the comforts of this world? Are you really okay if you don't get the things that you've been longing for?
Maybe it's the big truck, maybe it's the second house, maybe it's fill in the blank of what comforts are for you. Am I really okay if I make it to the end of this life and I don't have those comforts? Maybe for you it's status. I feel this myself. I don't like to think of myself as a status person. But I do real estate and I drive a really lame car.
I drive a Prius. And there are times, it's to save money. It's economical and I'm not driving the Prius I can drive my wife's awesome minivan. And I'll go and do some of these showings and I like to think of myself if someone doesn't care about status and certainly doesn't care about cars. I grew up in a family that sold them for a living. But there are moments, y'all, when I get before a client and I have this Prius and they've got a really nice truck and I go, you know what, it'd be really nice to have the status of having a bigger truck.
It'd be fun to drive but it'd be really nice to have that kind of respect. Fill in the blank for you of what money gets you. Are you really okay at the end of the day if you never actually get that level of status? Maybe for you it's not riches but it's not comfort, it's not status but it's security. It's like, am I really going to be okay if I never actually have enough savings? If I never have enough retirement?
Not saying that any of that's wrong but at the end of the day, are you going to be okay if Jesus doesn't blesses this? Because if you are not, you are asking Jesus to bless a temporary kingdom and not putting hope in the eternal kingdom of God. Maybe for you it's not necessarily money, maybe it's work. Like I said in the beginning, some of us put so much identity and hope in a job, in a promotion. When you don't get it, when we get passed over, are you really okay? If you never get your career to the place that you want it to be, are you going to be okay?
Are you going to be left hopeless and crushed? If you never get the validation from an employer, if you never get the validation from clients, are you going to be okay at the end of the day? Is the kingdom of God enough? Are you hoping that Jesus blesses a temporary kingdom? Maybe it's not work, maybe it's relationships. We do this with spouses. that we are doing okay if our spouse is operating in this way, if they are meeting these needs, if they are talking to us like this.
Everything's okay, but when it doesn't happen, we get frustrated. We get entitled. We get angry and we get upset. Are we hoping that Jesus blesses that temporary kingdom? Maybe you're not married, maybe you're thinking about finding someone to marry. Is it possible that you are frustrated, angry, bitter with God because you have not found the quote unquote one?
We do this in relationships, we do this with our own kids. Children are so easy to elevate than the tiny little kings that we worship. that education becomes so important, that how they're raised becomes so important, that following all the correct methods becomes so important. And if this doesn't happen in the way that we hope it is going to play out, we are crushed. We do this with their sports and with their activities that eventually they start doing sports and activities and the schedule that was once centered on on Sundays and community groups and mission and the kingdom of God gets replaced with a whole bunch of other stuff.
And we buy into the kingdom of this world and we sell it to our own kids. We do this with our children, we do this, I'll give you one more, we do this just with standing. Another way of saying standing is power. Two of the disciples did this with Jesus. James and John, there's a story where they come to Jesus and they say, when you set up your kingdom, and when they mean kingdom, they think the temporary kingdom that's going to happen in Jerusalem, when you set up your kingdom, can we set your left and your right? And what they're saying is, can we have positions of power?
And maybe for you that's winning. That life isn't good if I'm not winning. If I'm not being successful. That so much hope is bound up in success that when I'm not having success, what's the point? If I don't have the kind of influence that I need, what is the point of all of this? I could keep going through a long list of things, but ultimately I want you to ask yourself, if you are 75 years old and you don't have blank, fill in the blank for you, are you going to be okay?
Is Jesus really enough? If you don't have that, are you going to be crushed? Are you going to be hopeless like the disciples were when they put so much hope in a temporary kingdom of this world? We kill ourselves for a kingdom that never brings contentment. We serve false kings and idols that were never meant to bring comfort or joy. Church family, we were designed for so much more.
We are just like the disciples. And today for us who are in that spot, that is good news because when Jesus rises on Easter, it changes everything. He opens their eyes to the actual kingdom, the beauty of the kingdom that He had been so, He had been teaching them, He had been calling them to. And you know what I love about Resurrection Sunday? In the Gospel of John, the first words that Jesus says to His disciples, the disciples who abandoned Him, who denied Him, He doesn't come to them and scold them. And the first thing He says to them is, peace be with you.
That is the hope of the Gospel. Yes, we trust in idols. We trust in a temporary kingdom. We fall short. But the good news of the Gospel is that we live this side of the resurrection.
That means we live on this side of hope. That our hope is bound up in the eternal kingdom of God, which is so much better than the temporary kingdom of this world. And we have a so much better King. A King who conquered death, who rode into the city, who became our sacrifice, and on Easter Sunday conquered death with the resurrection so that we could experience the eternal kingdom of God forever. That's the good news of the Gospel, and that's the good news that we get to celebrate as we take the Lord's Supper. The band is going to come up, and we're going to take the Lord's Supper right now.
We're going to take communion and be reminded of what we get to celebrate this week in our groups that on this Thursday, years ago, we celebrate that on the night that Jesus was betrayed, He looked at His disciples, and He took the bread, and He broke it. He said, this is my body that was broken for you. This is going to happen. I'm going to be crushed for you. He took the cup, which is the cup of the new covenant. He said, this is my blood that is going to be shed for you, that as often as you gather, as often as you meet, take this bread, take this wine, and remember my death until I return.
We get to celebrate the good news of the Gospel that Jesus came on a good Friday and died in our place. And as we do that collectively as a church, may we reflect on the tiny kingdoms that we put hope in, coming repentant to the table, repenting of sin, joyously celebrating that we're part of an eternal kingdom. And if you have not trusted in Jesus, our hope for you this week is that you would be confronted by Him. That this Gospel that we so celebrate would become so real to you, that you would see your need of Him. Our hope is that you wouldn't take part in this, but you would take part in the risen Christ.
Let me pray. God, I am thankful that 2,000 years ago you didn't leave us in sin. You came and you bled and you died for us and we get to take that promise right now. God, I pray that you would help those of us who have trusted completely in you repent of believing that temporary kingdoms bring hope when they don't. They bring hopelessness.
Kingdom Parables
Transcript
Well, good morning. Jesus is a king. Jesus is the king. And that's what we've been spending the past several weeks talking about is that Jesus comes as a king, that he comes to us through history as the eternal king. So the Old Testament is going to say that there's a prophesied king who's going to come in the line of David.
And then the New Testament is going to say that king is Jesus, the eternal king that is the king of kings, that princes will rise up and bow down to, that is in charge of everything, is Jesus. And so what we've been doing for the past several weeks is we've been looking at what it means for Jesus to be king, for him to be a king, the king of our lives, of the universe. And what does it mean for him to have a kingdom and what does his kingdom look like? How does it work? And so that's what we've been spending some time doing. So the first week we looked and said that you can't have two kings.
That's not how kings work. And so some of you may have read, you know, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and you said there are two kings in that one. That's a made-up story. That's never happened. And there's talking animals there. Like there's other things going on.
You can only have one king. And so Jesus shows up, says he's king. Herod, who is a king, tries to kill him. And that we basically have the same options. We can get off of the throne and quit trying to be king of our lives. Or we can try to fight Jesus.
We said, so you can't have two kings. Then we looked at how we respond to Jesus' kingdom, that we respond in repentance, that he comes and we change to him because he is in charge of everything. And then last week we spent some time talking about the fact that since he is an eternal king, he deals with eternal problems. And his kingdom is a kingdom of light that advances against the domain of darkness and that we actually, as church, family, get to be a part of that advancing kingdom. So what we're going to do today is we're going to be in Matthew chapter 13.
And we've been spending some time in Matthew. Pretty much this whole series has been in Matthew. So we were in Matthew chapter 1 and 2. Then we were in 3 and 4. And we spent some time in 5. And so we're jumping on ahead into Matthew 13.
And Jesus, a good bit of his ministry, would tell stories. And we know them, we call them parables. Which just means, and I said early on, that he told confusing stories. And some of them are. Because sometimes he just says, the kingdom of God is like this. Or following God is like this.
And he'll just tell a story. And he just, he doesn't explain it. He's just like, it's like this. Boom. And he just walks away. And you're like, well, what are you talking about?
What does that mean? And so, so we're looking at some parables. And we're going to look at just a few short ones in Matthew 13. That where Jesus says, this is what my kingdom is like. This is what the kingdom of God is like. And so, the two things we're going to see as we look at, we're going to look at four parables.
But they kind of come in chunks together. Two main points Jesus is making is that the kingdom of God advances. And that the kingdom of God is priceless. And so that's what we're going to be looking at today. I'm going to pray. And then we'll hop in and look at Matthew 13.
God, we just thank you for this opportunity to gather together as church family. Pray that you would, through your Holy Spirit, teach us, lead us, and help us to continue to grow in what it looks like to be a gospel-centered community on mission in our city. Thank you for your grace and your goodness towards us. In Jesus' name, amen. Matthew 13, page number is up there. If you're using one of the Bibles that's in the pew, one of those blue and white Bibles.
If you don't own a Bible, take that with you. That's our gift to you. If you do own a Bible, leave that here. Unless you know of someone you can give it to. Matthew 13, 31 through 33 is the first one we're going to read. And it says this.
He put another parable before them. And so what we said is that a parable is just an illustration, a story, where Jesus is going to basically, like we would say a simile. It's going to say this. The kingdom is like this. And so he put another parable before them saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree.
So that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. Okay, so he's going to tell two back to back, and that's the first one. And what he's saying is that the kingdom advances. The kingdom of God advances. And what we're going to look at, we're going to kind of look at it in two different ways. But Jesus has a bunch of people around, and then he would just teach.
And sometimes he would just teach with authority, which just meant that he didn't have a text. So synagogue leaders would open the Bible, and they'd say, they'd read it, and they'd talk about it, and they'd say, this is what it means. Jesus would just be like, you know how the Bible says this? I say this. And it's like, you can't do that. Are you allowed to do that?
And so people would follow him around, and he would teach with authority. And then he would teach parables. So he would just say, the kingdom of heaven is like this. And sometimes he would explain them to his disciples, and sometimes he wouldn't. And here's what's great about this parable. First of all, we hear that, and we're like, okay, good.
The kingdom of parable is like a mustard seed that a guy planted. And I know all of you are like, yes, mustard seeds. I know so much about them. Like, I mean, I had to Google stuff, because I'm like, I want to find out how big mustard seeds are, what mustard plants are like. Because the most I know about mustard is French's is the best kind. That's about what I got when it comes to mustard.
But here's what's great about this parable, is that Jesus undersells the kingdom, it seems like. So if he had looked at them and said, the kingdom of heaven is like a cedar from Lebanon. All this Jewish audience would have been like, mmm, good. Like, that sounds great. Like, but he says the kingdom of heaven is a mustard seed. Everybody was like, what?
Run that by me again, boss? Like, how does that work? What are you talking about? It's kind of like, and he doesn't explain it, and we're going to kind of unpack it. But it's kind of like the, you know, ogres are like onions kind of thing.
It's like, why? Because they have layers. Well, parfait has layers, and it's better. And so that's kind of what I think they were hearing. It's like, mustard seeds, you're going to have to do a little more here to explain what you're talking about. But let me just unpack a little bit of the story here.
So he immediately, when he says this, everybody's like tracking because it's like this was a weird thing for him to say that the kingdom is like. Mustard seeds are tiny. So that if you took a mustard seed, you could pinch it in between your fingers and play that which hands the mustard seed in kind of game. Like, and let someone guess because they're really small. If I held one, it would just kind of could sit right there about as small as a BB, if not a little bit smaller. Mustard seeds are really small.
And so when he says they're the smallest of all seeds, he means all the seeds that they were familiar with. He's not speaking scientifically as the creator God. He's speaking in context with the people he's talking about because there are smaller seeds than mustard seeds, but not that they would have been familiar with and used. And he's talking about in the context of a garden. So what he's saying is mustard seeds are the smallest seeds y'all use to plant in your gardens.
But here's what happens. Once you plant it, it grows into pretty much a small tree. So that it becomes the largest garden plant. So large that birds come and make nests in it. That's his parable. That's what the kingdom is like.
And so what he's saying, first of all, is that if you got to choose, no one would pick the kingdom based off of how it's going to get started. That it's going to be so epically underwhelming when it starts. So that Jesus is walking around. He has a ministry for about three years. This is the God of the universe has a ministry for about three years. When he dies, 120 people.
God of the universe plants a church. Three years. 120 people. Like I've read books that would be like, we need to coach that guy up. He's doing some things wrong. Like there was 6,000 at one point and he told them to eat and drink his blood.
That's poor strategy. He freaked everybody out. Like Jesus, when big crowds would come, he would say really hard things to him. And so what he's saying is that his kingdom is going to be very small, very seemingly like it's not going to do anything. So that when he dies, he dies and then three days later he rises again and there's 120 people that are following him.
And you wouldn't think, well, obviously that's going to take over the world. Obviously that's going to have massive impacts on world history. Obviously this guy who spent most of his time with 12 men, one of whom betrays him. So even that gets cut down to 11. Obviously that's going to turn the world upside down. But it does.
And that's his point. Is that the kingdom advances externally. And that's the way we're going to look at it today. Is that this first one we're going to look at is it advances externally. Which means that more and more and more people are going to become believers. Are going to follow Jesus.
And that's exactly what happened. So there was 120 then. There are now in the world 2 billion people that follow Jesus. That claim him as king. That submit and surrender their lives to him. 2 billion.
120. I read this quote. And I think it's interesting because I don't understand mustard. Basically mustard plants, once you get them going, are hard to get rid of. And they spread and they grow in unlikely conditions. So that when we were looking up some of the places that mustard grows, it's like Russia and Africa.
And Egypt. And Australia. Like it was all these. It's like, so it's not a regional climate type thing. Mustard is a hardy plant that grows well. And once it gets to growing, it's hard to get rid of.
It says this. The point in other words. This is John Dominic Crossan. The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbial small seed and grows into a shrub of 3 or 4 or 5 feet in height. It is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted. That it tends to get out of control.
That it tends to track birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, Jesus said, is what the kingdom of God is like. Like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. So mustard can grow in unlikely situations and grows well once it gets going. One of the best examples, I think, in modern examples for us is the Chinese church. So the church in China under Mao, Mao Zedong, in 1949, he decided he was going to get rid of the church.
He's one of the guys who called it the opiate of the masses. And he wanted to stamp out and get rid of the church. So what he did was there's about a million believers in China. He sent away 10,000 missionaries. So there were 10,004 missionaries in China and about a million Chinese believers.
He sent all of the 10,000 missionaries out. It was referred to as an unwanted Exodus or undesired Exodus. So that was 1949. So it was about 60 years later in China. The estimates, because it's not really legal to be Bible-believing following Christians in China. There are some state-sanctioned churches, but they kind of have regulations on what they're allowed to talk about.
So there are a lot of underground churches. But the estimates on how many believers there are in China now, 60 years later, under a very repressive attempt to stamp out Christianity and religion, is somewhere between 50 and 100 million. So it was a million, and he was like, well, let's get rid of them. And it didn't work. Because that's what Christianity is like. It's like a mustard seed that's very difficult to get rid of.
They estimate that about 10,000 people become believers every day in China. So he got rid of 10,000 missionaries, and there's 10,000 added every day now to be missionaries to China. Because that's the way the church works. Because that's what the kingdom is like. It's like a mustard seed that starts off really small and underwhelming, and then grows and grows and advances and moves and becomes really hard to get rid of. That's why we get really excited about church planting.
That's why we get really excited about community groups and why we want to launch community groups all over our city, why we want to plant community groups all over our city, because a handful of believers in Jesus genuinely following him as king is a dangerous thing. A beautifully dangerous thing when it comes to being a part of his kingdom advancing. Because the kingdom does advance. And it will advance. And so one of the things we need to know as believers, and especially as we try to build with people and we're trying to build relationships and trying to help people meet Jesus and show what it looks like to follow Jesus, and sometimes that can be discouraging, Jesus says the kingdom advances.
Period. Matthew 16, Jesus says, I will build my church. Which means that all of our effort, all of our energy is worth it, because he is going to advance his kingdom. All the energy you put into building relationships with your coworkers, all the energy you're putting into trying to just be a good neighbor and love and bless people in our city, with the hopes that some might would meet Jesus and with the hopes that some might would just be blessed by the fact that you know Jesus. It's worth it. Because the kingdom does advance.
And that's why we care about and get excited about things that look small and like not super likely like they're going to do great things, because that's what the mustard seed is. If you laid them on a table and said, all right, we're going to grow the biggest plant and let kids pick which one they wanted, or if you didn't know anything about them, not a lot of people are going to be like, oh, this tiny one. Duh. It's going to be great later. That's why we get super excited about it. I was having a conversation with my grandmother.
She's a sweet lady. This is a fun conversation. But I had a conversation with her on vacation this year, and she said she, she, my granddad had been a pastor, so she was asking questions. She always asks them questions about the church, church plant, what, what it is, what we're doing, what a church plant is, because she's just kind of, you know, it's a new idea to her. And so she said, she said, let me ask you something. I said, what?
She said, if God called you to a church, would you go? I was like, what? She said, if God called you to pastor a church, would you? And I said, well, if God told me to, sure. She said, really? I said, yes, ma'am.
And she said, well, I'm going to pray that he calls you to a church. And then she said, cause I just, this thing you're doing, I don't really know what it is. And I was like, I was like, okay, well, just caveat conversation I had to have with her, which was if God calls me, sure, I'll do what God wants me to, but I don't think he's going to. And if a church just calls me, no, for several reasons. One of which being that they don't have good sense. And that sounds like a bad idea.
If those are the kind of decisions they make. So anyway, but that's why we get super excited about what we get to be a part of. That's why, that's why it's worth the energy and the effort we're putting in to start something new in West Columbia. And, and why it's amazing and exciting that we have five community groups and the options and the opportunities to have more eventually. Because Jesus doesn't need much. And he actually likes to show off with something really small and seemingly insignificant.
Because he gets a lot of glory from it. That's why I get real excited that we're a ragtag scrub team. Because it's like, Jesus, you're going to have to show up for this to be good. And he can, and he does. And he says that his kingdom does advance and will advance. And then it says, all right, so first, that's the first one.
And we were looking at him. He's saying his kingdom advances. We're looking at him in two different ways. Kingdom advances externally. So people will meet Jesus.
More churches will be planted. More groups will be launched. 33. He told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened. Again, just kingdom of heaven's like this.
And he doesn't explain it. It doesn't go through. Just, that's what it is. I just want to time out for just a second. One of the things that I, it's very exciting just, just to kind of look at when he tells these stories. The first one is a man takes a mustard seed and plants it.
And the second one is a woman takes 11 and does this. And so even in just Jesus is telling parables, he's inviting everybody in to be a part of his mission. And it's just, it's just cool. So I just wanted to point that out. But the way we're going to look at this one, just mental image wise, and he's just saying the kingdom advances, but the kingdom advances internally as well.
So the kingdom advances externally and the kingdom advances internally. So you take a bunch of flour and he says that it's, how many measures? Three measures of flour, which was about 50 pounds, enough to feed about a hundred people. And so when Jesus first started and he was like the kingdom of heaven's like a mustard seed and some of our outdoorsy gardeny type people were like, I'm tracking. This sounds great. Like a tree.
Okay. Hmm. And then some of, some of us were like, okay. And now he's talking about bread. So I'm like, all right, all right, I'm listening.
Carbohydrates. I'm tracking. Tell me more about this lady with the bread. Do you have any samples that I might understand leaven better? But here's, here's how leaven works.
You take a little bit of starter, which is just like a gross ball of goo. And then, uh, you feed it. You can feed it flour and the starter stays together. And then you add just a little bit to the bread you're using and yeast spreads through all of it. So you can't have like half yeasted.
You can't, you can't have like, it's going to take over the whole thing. So when she adds yeast to this, she can't just have a little bit or she adds a little bit and it takes over 50 pounds of it. That he says it leavens the whole lump. And here's the thing. It doesn't look different. It just operates differently.
It doesn't have this magical external change. It's just going to work differently when you stick it in an oven. When you cook it, it's going to rise. It's going to have different internal properties. And here's what's great about that. What he, what we're looking at here is that the kingdom advances internally.
So some of you became believers. This is what Jesus does inside of our souls. Is that he takes over everything. And that's beautiful and terrifying. But Jesus takes over everything.
So some of us are in here like, man, I'm a Christian, but I just, I'm just not getting it right. Like I'm just messing it up. I feel like a lump. He leavens the whole lump. So if you're like, I'm a lump, good.
Leaven's going to take over the whole lump. That's what he's going to do. That's how that works. And here's the thing. If you become a Christian, you don't look different. It's not like people become a Christian and start smiling like an idiot all the time.
That's not how that works. Why are you so happy? Well, I'm glad you asked. That's not how that works. I'm a Christian. I love Jesus.
My face looks like this most of the time. Like, it's not what happens. It's not an external thing. He changes internally. He takes over our souls. My other grandmother, I just got grandmother stories today, but my other grandmother, when we were growing up, my parents would have to go out of town some and they would invite our grandparents to come watch us.
And so they would just come stay at our house and watch the three boys. And so at first it was just like, they would invite them in and they would be like, just, just hang out, watch, be grandparents, do your, do your grandparent thing. And, but my grandmother, her name is Ea, which is just Yoruba, which is African language means grandmother, but Ea can't sit still and not do things. So when they're like, come relax, just get to be a grandparent. She's incapable of that. So she would, she would get into everything.
So like before they came anyway, we had to like clean the house and hide stuff. And inevitably at the end of the week, she would have found it and been like, Oh, we're, we're reorganizing all this. She, she came one time for like four days when they came back, she had rearranged the kitchen. So that like my parents came back and would like open to get a plate and there'd be cups. And it was just like, why? Why would a person do this?
And the great part was that my parents were just like, we'll get used to it. Like they didn't change it back. It just seemed like too much work, but she didn't like the feng shui of kitchen organization. I don't know. I don't know what drove her to do that, but she just reorganized. So then what they had to do is this happened about once a year.
They started giving her jobs. They started when she was coming, they were like, Hey, we want you to watch the kids and paint these two rooms and do wallpaper. And it got to where they had a list long enough that it was like, do this first, this second. If you get to this until my grandparents would come watch us and like redecorate our house. But my parents had to like point them in the right direction because otherwise they were just going to get into everything.
Here's what happens though. Jesus does that in our souls. So for the most part, most of us, we want to become a Christian because we, we see a glaring need for Jesus here. Jesus, I want to place my faith in you because I need you here. This is a hot mess. I need you active here.
And he shows up and he does that. He changes us. He moves us. He rescues us there. And then you're like, thank you so much. Have a seat.
And he's like, Nope. It's not how that works. Jesus comes in. We talked last week. Jesus isn't a cat that just, we add to our life to add a little bit of comfort and a little bit of, when I feel sad, I get to hug and pet. And then he goes and kind of minds his own business in the corner.
Jesus is a king. And so Jesus leavens the whole lump. He takes over everything. So we'll invite him in because we need help with our children. And then, and then he's like, he helps you learn how, what that looks like and rearranges your view on parenting. And then he's like, you want to talk about, let's talk about finances.
And you're like, whoa, no. Hey, let's talk about your view on relationships. No, no, no. That's not, that's not why you were invited in. And then let me, let me just tell you this. He's going to leaven the whole lump.
C.S. Lewis said at one point that, that God loves us the same way that an artist loves a masterpiece in a lot of ways. And that by the time an artist is done with a masterpiece, that if the canvas could talk, it would be a very painful process because there would be times when he had to restart and re scrape and re, re begin what he was doing. And, and, and over time, eventually the canvas would just be saying, couldn't I just be a sketch? Couldn't you just like make me nice enough? And he says, no.
See, God doesn't have a sleepy love for you. He has an active love for us and that we're satisfied way more quickly than he is. So most of us reach a place and we're like, I feel pretty good. And he's like, no, we got, we got a lot of work to do because I care about you enough to continue working when it's difficult. Because he's going to leaven the whole love. He is going to take over internally.
So here, here's the thing. Romans says that we'll be conformed to the image of his son, that we're predestined to be conformed to the images of his son. Romans 8 says that. And so what's going to happen is that over our life as a Christian, if we've genuinely placed our faith in Jesus and are following him, he's going to continue to change our outlook on, on everything that our, our, our way we look at money is his, the way we look at relationships is his, the way we view marriage is his, the way we view sex is his, the way we view every bit of our time, everything belongs to him. And he's going to continue to take over.
And here's the thing we've said repeatedly that kingdoms only advance militantly, that a kingdom advances against the kingdom militantly. Jesus, because he loves you and is gracious to you is going to militantly take over your soul. And so a lot of times we draw lines in the sand and we hunker down and we say, all right, if you want this one, you're going to have to take it. We draw battle lines and we say, all right, Jesus, this is going to be a fight. Jesus wins. He's going to, and he cares enough about you to fight you.
And so some of you, maybe that's, that's your story. You became a Christian and you're like, man, this has been like a fight. Since I became a Christian. And Jesus cares enough about you to not stop, to not, not let you go and to continue to advance in your soul, his kingdom, because of his gracious love for you. And he's going to take over the whole thing. So.
Let me give some encouragement, because that is true. If you are here and you're saying, I just don't feel like I'm growing. Keep following, keep fighting, keep putting yourself in the right positions, keep trying to get as close to his grace as he possible. Gather with your community group, gather when we get together on Sundays, keep reading scripture, because Jesus is going to leaven everything. He is going to, his kingdom is going to advance in you. And if you've been fighting him, surrender as quickly as possible.
It's the best advice I can give you, because he is not going to be satisfied. There are no holdouts of your old kingdom allowed anymore. There are no areas that Jesus doesn't get to be. There are no dark corners and closets that he's not going to mess with. There are no places that his light isn't going to penetrate. And surrender as quickly as you can.
And ask him to help you surrender. So that he might continue to advance his kingdom in your soul. Because he's going to. Okay. So here's what we're going to do.
Oh, let me say this. As you become a Christian, a lot of times people think that I will sin less. And that's true. Ish. But that's not the predominant way that we grow as Christians.
One of the predominant ways that we grow as Christians is that we see our sin more. We see it more clearly. We see it more often. And so a lot of times you're thinking, oh my goodness, I didn't even realize that this whole aspect of my life was not in line with, I feel so terrible. And it's God's grace to show us our sin. That's one of the ways that he helps us grow.
And so as we continue to grow as Christians, we're just going to see more sin and have more areas we get to repent, more areas we get to surrender. And so sometimes people think, oh, I became a Christian. I was doing really well. And now I know that I've got this scenario and this scenario and this scenario. And the truth is, you had him the whole time. Jesus and his grace is now showing them to you.
And that is growth. And he is going to take over everything. Okay. Now we can jump down. Matthew 13, 44. So in between these sets of parables, he explains another one that he told earlier in Matthew.
And so we're just skipping over his explanation and jumping to 44. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Okay. Two stories, two parables.
First one, there's a guy in a field and he finds a treasure in the field. So we don't know why he was in the field, why he was digging in this field that he didn't own, but he's there. He finds a treasure. Maybe he just, the treasure was there and he covers it up. So he hides it.
He's like, Oh my goodness, I found a treasure. Like, have you ever thought about like daydreamed about finding treasure? At least when you were eight and wanted to be a pirate. Like, so he finds treasure and he covers it up. And then he's like, like, what do I do? And he leaves and he sees a for sale sign.
And he, dear diary, jackpot. Like, so he goes and sells everything that he has. He's just, just like, Hey, Hey man, I need to sell my truck. Like I need to, I need my, I got to sell my car. Like I got to sell everything I got. I got to sell my house.
And he sells everything that he has. I mean, nowadays he'd be like hitting up eBay, selling his lamp. Last thing, just so you know, if you're going to sell everything on eBay, sell your computer last. It's just a helpful tip. So, so he sells everything that he has. And his, his family, I just, could you can just assume that people around him think he's absolutely crazy.
And in his joy, he shows up and he's like, how much you asking for the field? And they're like, this much? And he's like, they don't know about the treasure. And so he buys the field, sold everything he had, buys the field in his joy. The second one is, uh, kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. So this guy's a merchant.
He buys and sells thing and it sells things. And he loves pearls. He loves fine pearls. Like, so he's, he's out merchanting, buying and selling. Uh, and he finds a pearl of great price. And, and it would seem from the parable Jesus tells, that he knows the value of the pearl.
And the other guy, apparently he buys it from knows it's valuable, but maybe not as valuable as it actually is. But he goes and sells all that he has. So he goes with his merchanting and sells everything he's got and comes over and buys that pearl. And that's what the kingdom of heaven is like. Real quick. How much does the kingdom of heaven cost?
The first guy. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man fell and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells. Yeah. All that he has. And he buys that field.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold. All that he had. And bought it. Here's what Jesus is saying. Well, here's what we see from the parables. The kingdom costs.
Everything. All that we have. That it takes everything. What this means for us as believers is that there is no non-radical form of Christianity. There is no normal run of the mill Christianity that when we become believers, everything is on the table. It's not, I'll decide where I'm going to work.
No, that's on the table. I'll decide what, what, what kind of, what I'm going to study in school and what, what I'm going to do with my life, what my goals are. No, that's on the table. I'll decide who, who I marry and how my relationships will work. No, that's on the table. When we approach Jesus, everything's on the table so that he gets to tell us where we live, where we go, what we do, how our life's going to play out.
Everything belongs to him that we show up and we submit to him as king. And everything is on the table because he is Lord. And so it's not, we read the Bible and decide whether or not we want to do this. Our choice isn't, is this good or is this bad? And is this what we want to do? Our choice is to submit and follow because he's Lord.
And it costs everything. What's beautiful is that's not the point of the parable. He says that, he says that it costs you everything, but that's not his point. And that's not the point he's making in the parable. So Jesus says earlier, he says that the kingdom is going to advance.
It's going to continue. It's going to move. People are going to meet Jesus. People are going to surrender and follow him. And that the kingdom is going to advance in your soul. And it's going to take over every last square inch of you.
And it's going to cost everything. But that's not the point he's making in this parable. Here's what's beautiful about this. The kingdom is worth everything. The point in the parable is that it's priceless. That these guys give up everything.
They sacrifice everything. And they don't feel like it's a sacrifice. I saw recently that there was a professional football player whose name I will not say because it's Samoan. And it's like, he and his brother both played. His brother had kidney issues and had to stop. And then when he found out that his brother needed a kidney, his immediate response was, he can have mine.
And he was a 99% match. And I was reading the article. And so the article was, professional football player has to stop playing football to give up his kidney. And so he sacrifices his kidney. He sacrifices his playing football. But at no point does that register as a sacrifice to him.
Yeah, he gets it. He had to lose weight to be in shape enough to give the kidney. And he's got to do rehab. And he can't play professional football anymore, which I'm sure is something that he has poured countless hours into. And in his brain, it's like, yeah, but that's my brother. So this is a sacrifice, but not really.
And that's kind of just a glimpse into what Jesus is saying about the kingdom. When we understand the kingdom, that yeah, yeah, it's a sacrifice. And yeah, we're giving up everything, but in our joy, because of the matchless worth, the immeasurable worth of what we're getting out of it. So what I find to be true is when, when I'm frustrated by the amount of work I'm putting into following Jesus, I feel like he's asking a lot. And I can't believe that I got to do this to be a Christian. I can't believe that other people get to live like this and do this with their, and I got to do this.
What, what I, what I've realized is I don't get the weight of my sin when that happens. I don't understand what's been given to me in the gospel. When my heart goes there, I've missed this parable because what I'm thinking is, yeah, it does cost everything. And what I'm missing is that it's worth everything and that we still get the better deal because it's priceless. That what's been given to us in Jesus has no value. You can't, you can't put a price tag on it.
It has, it's not even in the same category. So that, that they give up everything, but they don't see it that way. It's priceless. And that's what Jesus is saying. And that's what Jesus is saying. We need to understand about the kingdom is that it, yeah, it costs everything, but he's already accomplished everything for us.
So, um, I think it was last year, uh, a guy, the gas station I go to all the time called Murphy Express on Augusta road, which is right near my house. Uh, a guy won the mega millions lottery jackpot, $400 million, which is always fun. When you talk to people about someone winning the lottery, because they'll be like, yeah, but after taxes, but it was like 200 million. And it's like, bro, it's $200 million given to you for free. That's a horrible thing to complain about. Like you missed the point here, but he wins $400 million.
You ever sat and thought about, oh man, like when that happened, I thought, man, which it really doesn't matter. It was close to my house. Cause he just picked random Numbers, but it feels like it matters that it was close to my house. It's like, man, what if I won the lottery? Like you ever think about that? Like what you would do if you won the lottery.
And there's just this moment where it's like, ah, there'd be a lot of freedom with that. You wouldn't have to work. I mean, you could have, you wanted to, if you felt what you were doing fun, you wouldn't have to. Anytime your boss got on your nerves, you'd just be like, I quit. Cause you didn't need the money. You have to do what you want.
You wouldn't have to work. There's this immediate feeling of like, I wouldn't have to worry about my future. Like I'd be in control of circumstances because of the amount of money I'd have. I'd get comfort and rest. I just, I wouldn't, the stress and the weight that I carry just wouldn't be there anymore. That I just, I'd be free.
That's what, that's what you play out in your mind. And you may not add those words to it, but that's what you're thinking. When you go there about thinking about what you would do with $400 million, and you just think, oh yeah, I could put a roller coaster in my backyard. And I could pay people to run it. And that would be a good use of my money. Like you just, you go through and you think about all the stuff that you could do and the joy that it would bring you and the, the freedom that it would bring you and the comfort and the control and the power.
Like you just, all of these things that immediately you find rest in just this idea. This idea of what that would accomplish for you. And so what Jesus is saying in this parable is, God has the winning lottery ticket, but he's in the witness relocation program. So he can't go on TV. He can't go cash this thing in. It's not allowed to, but he's going to sell it to you.
Whatever you got. Here's my house. Here's my car. Here's everything I have. I'm going on an adventure. Here's my car.
Cause I'm just going to hold a ticket for a while that says I get $400 million. And I don't mind leveraging everything I have for this short period of time because of the great amount of worth that I'm going to get out of it on the back end. No brainer. And it'd be as if you couldn't talk to your family about it. So they thought you'd lost your mind.
I can explain a little bit about what's happening, but I can't tell you everything yet. You're not going to get everything yet, but just trust me. I know you don't see it, but just trust me. Jesus is saying the kingdom is that for our entire lives. That what he's accomplished for us in the cross, you don't have to work anymore. You don't have to prove your value and your worth because Jesus has already given it to you in the cross.
That when Jesus died, he took your sin. He took your debt. Some of you think, oh man, if I had $400 million, no more credit cards, no more credit card debt. I'd be out of debt. All my school loans paid off. Everything.
I just go pay cash for a house. How much? $300,000. This is going to be a while. Jesus paid our debt. Gone. And he didn't give us a clean slate.
He gave us his slate. He didn't put his back in neutral and say, go work it out. He gave us his righteousness. So we don't have to work anymore. You don't have to prove your worth. You don't have to earn it.
You don't have to be at the end of your life and look at Jesus and say, did I do well enough? He's already accomplished everything on your behalf. We know that regardless of how everything works out, there's a sovereign king in charge of the universe who's adopted us into his family and has perfect control over everything. That our hope and our security and our future is set because of what has already taken place on our behalf because of Jesus. That our invitation into the kingdom is priceless. And that every bit of everything that we give up for it is never wasted.
And at the end of the day, when we put everything, when we put everything on the line, at no point have we reached paying back what's already been given to us. At no point has it become an even trade. And that's why he says in his joy, he sells everything. Because he knows what he's getting. See, Jesus says that the kingdom is going to advance. More people are going to be brought into his kingdom.
And that the kingdom is going to advance in our souls. And that it's going to cost us everything. And that it's worth it. It's priceless. And that what we get out of it cannot be measured. Can't be counted.
That the value of the kingdom is uncomprehendable. So that when we think about what we're doing and what we're a part of, at no point does it tap out in our wildest imaginations of what has been given to us in Christ. At no point have we reached what it actually is. The band's going to come back up. We're going to sing and praise Jesus for the fact that through him, through his sacrifice on the cross, we get invited into his kingdom. That his kingdom does advance in us.
That it does advance in this city, in this world. And that it's worth everything. That what he's accomplished for us in the cross is priceless. Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your love. Thank you for the hope that's been given to us in you.
We pray, Lord, that through your Holy Spirit, you would help us to see the pricelessness of your kingdom. The great value and worth of what you've already accomplished for us in the cross. And God, we ask that you would do what you promised to do. That your kingdom would advance in our souls. That we would repent of sin. That we would continue to follow you.
That we would, when we see our sin, God, we would praise you for your grace. That you've covered it. And that you've been gracious enough to show it to us. God, we ask for your kingdom to advance in this city. For more groups to be launched. More leaders to be trained.
More churches to be planted. More relationships to be built. That God, you would take mustard seeds all over the world and continue to grow them. That your kingdom would continue to grow. And God, we ask you that you would help us to see, to taste, to feel the pricelessness of what has been accomplished for us in the cross. That an unpayable debt's been paid.
That wealth and riches, eternal grace and love, favor has been applied to our account. That we've been welcomed in because of your sacrifice. We love you. We praise you. We thank you. In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Kingdoms at War
Transcript
If you ask that question, what's wrong with the world in any group, no one says, what? Wrong with the world? I think we're good. Pretty sure we're crushing it right now. I'm pretty sure ISIS and Ebola is how things are supposed to work. I don't know why we would want to try to fix this.
Nobody does that. The truth is, everybody in this room may have a different opinion on how to fix the problem that we have, but nobody has a question as to whether or not we have a problem. Like, systematic, history-wide, worldwide problem. Right? So we're in our third week of talking about Jesus as king, that Jesus is a king and he's an eternal king.
And so here's what I want us to look at today. If Jesus is an eternal king, and if there is cosmic level problem, a cosmic level brokenness in the world, doesn't that kind of get put on his plate? Like, if he's an eternal king, if we're going to believe that, if we're going to say that Jesus is an eternal king that rules and reigns over creation forever, isn't this problem kind of his problem? That's how that works. So if you're a king and you're over a kingdom and your territory is fine and you're at peace, but everybody's dying from the plague, your kingdom's not doing so hot.
Or if everybody's well-fed but there's an army advancing, you can't, as kings, say, oh, we're doing good for another week or two until they get here. Like, you can't do that. And this is who we would take this complaint to, correct? It would be on his plate. So, like, nobody's gone to the mayor of West Columbia and said, what are you going to do about ISIS? What's your plan for fixing Ebola in Africa?
Nobody's saying that to the mayor of West Columbia, and if they are, he's going to be like, leave. Like, I have no, like, I've never sat down and written a letter to President Obama that was like, dear President Obama, what are you going to do about the ridiculous amount of potholes on the road to my house? Like, that's not going to make it to his desk because that's not his level of problem that he deals with. Does that make sense? So if we have a cosmic, worldwide, everybody agrees that there is an issue, that there's brokenness, that something is off, that this isn't how it ought to be, then doesn't that go to the king of the universe?
If Jesus is that king, doesn't that get put on his plate? So what we're going to do, we've taken the past two weeks and we've kind of looked at how Jesus' kingdom advances in a really personal manner. So we've looked at when Jesus shows up and declares that he's king, you can no longer remain neutral to that, just like if someone walked into your house and declared themselves king and owner of your house. You can't remain neutral. You can't be like, uh, all right, sounds good. Can I sit on my couch?
Like, you've got to address this problem. So Jesus shows up, declares himself king of the universe, and so we have to respond to that, and we said that we can respond like the wise men do in Matthew chapter 1 and 2, where they worship, or we could respond like Herod, where he tries to kill Jesus and defend his kingdom. Last week we looked at how we respond to Jesus as king, and that's through repentance, which is just acknowledging that we're sinful, that we're broken, and that we need him, that we need him to accomplish on our behalf what we can't accomplish, that we're not going to fix this problem, and that we need him to do it. So what we're doing today is we're zooming out.
We're going to take a very wide look at what the kingdom is, what Jesus came to accomplish, how he addresses this issue. I'm going to tell you that the Bible does agree with you that there's an issue, and it does say that Jesus addresses it, so it does actually get put to his desk. And we're going to zoom out. So if we were going to look at the kingdom, what we've kind of done is we've zoomed in on how it actually plays out personally. So if I was going to talk to you about the Roman Empire, we could zoom in on some random guy.
We could talk about Milanitis, the guy who sells horseshoes. And we could learn some things about the Roman Empire, but we wouldn't learn the wide scope of how it got started, how it ended, where its territory was, by just looking at this one guy. Just like watching Honey Boo Boo tells you something about America, but not everything about America. It's telling us something. You can learn some things, but just not everything that you would need to know, hopefully, about America. And so what we're going to do is we're going to zoom out.
I'm going to pray, and we're going to look at Jesus' kingdom as it affects, as it works on a bigger, more cosmic level. God, we thank you for the opportunity to gather and to study your word. I pray that you would reveal to us, show us, teach us about your kingdom, about how it works, and how we are invited into and involved in it. So God, we thank you, we praise you, we love you, in Jesus' name. Amen. So we will be in Matthew chapter 4 and 5.
So we've looked in Matthew chapter 1, Matthew chapter 2, and 3, and now today we'll be in 4 and 5. But we're going to start, zoomed out a little bit further. So we're going to go to Colossians 1, we're going to show it up here. This is in the book of Colossians. We studied this over the summer, and I just want to point something out to us. So it says, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
So in Jesus, we have redemption, which means He buys us back, He makes us His again, He forgives our sins, which means there's brokenness personally in our lives, and that Jesus forgives that, that He steps in and takes our place and forgives us our sin, and that through that, He invites us into His kingdom. So the first half of that says, He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son. Here's how the kingdom works. We've said this repeatedly, but a kingdom advances against another kingdom. Kingdoms are by their very nature militant. And so Jesus' kingdom, if He's an eternal king, is going to advance against a much larger issue than just the small answers that we would give to what would fix the problem.
So that if I was going to raise an army, if I was going to begin to take over territory, if I was going to begin to claim area, I would start with my neighbor's house because I can declare war on that. Like it's pretty even. I can go over to Mr. Kirchtoffer and tell him that I'm claiming his house. He's like 90, but he's been in like every war that America's ever fought. So I don't know.
I think I could take him, but he's scrappy. I can't declare war on Russia. I mean, I could. We could decide right now that I'm going to declare war on Russia. Y'all could vote. We could say we were doing it.
Russia wouldn't care. Wouldn't do anything about it. They wouldn't even show up on their radar. See, what happens is when Jesus shows up and declares that he's a king, they think, okay, militant advance against the enemy. And everyone in the room thinks, Rome. Jesus is going to overthrow Rome.
Here's something I know. When I asked earlier what the problem with the world was, none of you immediately thought Rome. They're the worst, but they're no longer existing kingdom and they're funny hats. And they're still showing up in our movies like Gladiator. If we could just get rid of Rome, we'd fix the problem. But that's what all the disciples thought.
When Jesus showed up and he said he was going to set up a kingdom, they all thought, okay, he's going to overthrow the Romans. But the truth is, three, four hundred years later, if he'd have showed up, everybody would have thought he was going to attack something else. He was going to handle something else. If he showed up a hundred years later, they would have thought he was going to handle something else. If he showed up today, we'd say, hey, here are the issues. Attack these.
Advance your kingdom here. And if he shows up a hundred years later, the answer would be different. So he's going to zoom out. He's going to see much larger issues than we see. Roman Empire lasts like 400 years. Jesus has bigger fish to fry.
You see, he has a kingdom that advances against the domain of darkness. When it says that Jesus, he's delivered us from the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of his beloved son, what it's saying is that that's the war that is being waged. That Jesus is not advancing against the Romans because he's got much bigger enemies to deal with. Just like America could declare war on Russia and I can only declare war on Mr. Kirchstaffer, which now I'm thinking about it, I may need some allies, so we'll talk afterwards. You face enemies on your same level.
And so when they say, aren't you going to handle the Romans? It's not even on Jesus' radar for what his kingdom advances against. He's going to advance against the domain of darkness. So here's what's happened. When God created the world in the book of Genesis, he creates it, he says everything's good except for Adam shouldn't be alone, so he makes him a teammate to go through life together. He gives them both dominion, so he makes man and woman in the image of God and he gives them dominion over the earth and then he says that that's good, that he declares this good and right and then there's the creation that he has rebels against him and so that his good order fractures.
See, Satan shows up in the form of a snake in Genesis chapter 3 and he deceives Eve and her husband who was with her wasn't deceived but he joins in passively, lets her be deceived, watches and then just partakes in the rebellion understanding what he was getting himself into. Not fully, but he went tricked. And at that moment, God's good creation rebelled against him and there was a cosmic level brokenness and darkness enters into what was once light and good. And when Jesus comes back, when he shows up and he says he has a kingdom, he doesn't mean I'm here to overthrow the Romans, he means I'm here to reverse the effects of sin and brokenness in the world.
I'm here to advance against the domain of darkness that began with Satan, sin, and death. And can we agree that death is a bigger enemy than the Romans, than the Russians, than ISIS? Death's a bigger issue. Death wins, you just gotta wait a little while. So he says I'm gonna face a cosmic level enemy because there's cosmic level brokenness and this is I'm a cosmic level king, I'm an eternal king, so this is what I advance against.
So that's what Jesus comes to set up his kingdom against, that's what he comes to advance against. And here's the thing, so we would say, okay, hold on a second, hold on a second, so the world, we sinned, we rebelled against God, there was brokenness, Satan enters in their sin which just means that we no longer love Jesus like we ought to, we no longer love God, like they ought to, but they chose to make themselves God, they chose to care more about themselves than anything else and so we would say, well why doesn't God just get rid of evil? Like if he's God, if this is a cosmic level problem, we all agree there's something wrong with the world, why didn't he just fix that? Because he'd have to get rid of all of us because of the collateral damage at this point.
You see, when the United States gets into a conflict with a country like Iraq, or Afghanistan, which we've been over there hanging out for 10, 15 years now doing stuff, we have the capability to make that a black spot on Google Maps. Y'all understand that, right? Like the United States has the capability of creating craters where there used to be countries. we don't because of the collateral damage of the people who are a part of things that would get caught up in it. And so God could erase evil but he'd have to erase us because the truth is we've actually joined in the rebellion. We're selfish, we're greedy, we're a part of the problem.
Russ was very correct when he raised his hand and said he was. I am. We're a part of the rebellion and the brokenness, the sin that pervades the world. It's infected our souls. And so, God has an option, show up and destroy everything and get rid of evil. But he cares about us.
So what Jesus does is he comes to live a perfect life. So he doesn't rebel, he doesn't get infected, he doesn't join the domain of darkness but walks in light and then he dies in our place for our sins. So that he's headed to the cross and he's going to die so that darkness, our darkness can be put onto him and so that his light, righteousness can be given to us. So that our sin can be put onto him and so that his good things can be given to us. So that he who didn't deserve to die can die on behalf of those who do so that he can swap places with us.
He's advancing against the cosmic enemy which is sin. Ephesians 6 says this, it's a sister letter to Colossians. It says, For we do not wrestle and wrestle there just means hand-to-hand combat to the death. So it's not like WWE where they get to come back after they wrestle. It's like gladiatorial things where it's like, you lost, you don't exist anymore. Too bad.
So we don't wrestle, we don't have hand-to-hand combat to the death against flesh and blood which means our problems aren't worldly problems but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So that Jesus' kingdom advances against darkness wherever it shows up. And see, the thing is when we say that these are issues, when we name off ignorance, when we name off racism, when we name off all the things that cause problems in our world, those are just a part of how darkness shows up, how sin shows up and works itself out. But it's not the biggest level problem.
So, Jesus chooses to show up and handle the actual problem that we're facing. His kingdom advances not against the Romans but against darkness. He has a kingdom of light that advances against darkness. So, jumping to Matthew 4, we're going to look at Jesus walking around and doing some of the stuff that he does. and it helps make sense of a lot of what Jesus did while he was on earth. It helps clarify, at least for me, a lot of what Jesus is doing. So, what we've looked at is that Jesus has a cosmic kingdom that advances against a cosmic enemy, Satan's sin and death.
He came just for the sole purpose of going to the cross so that he could die and so that he could disarm, as Colossians says, that he disarms the rulers and authorities, putting them to open shame because he canceled the record of our debt. So, the enemy wants us caught up in this and he wants us to be destroyed. And Jesus pays for our sins so that he was destroyed on our behalf so that we don't have to be destroyed as we place faith in him. Here's what Jesus does, Matthew 4, 23, 25. We looked last week at verse 17 where it says Jesus showed up and from that time Jesus began to preach saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
So, he repents, he declares that the way we respond to the kingdom is repentance. Admitting that we're broken, admitting that we're wrong and we need him to show up and then he starts telling us what he did. And he went throughout all Galilee, this is verse 23, he went throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, that's where Jewish people gathered on Saturdays, not unlike this, what we're doing right now, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel, which means good news, the gospel of the kingdom. So, he's proclaiming, he's going around in Galilee, all this area, this area in Judea and he's proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, that he has a kingdom, that it is coming and that it is good news and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
So, his fame spread throughout all Syria and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, which is spiritual enemies, epileptics and paralytics and he healed them and great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. So, Jesus walks around and I think most of us are familiar with this, Jesus walks around and he heals people, casts out demons, which the Bible is very okay with spiritual things. We're Westerners, we're not for the most part. Like maybe we like that show where they go around and they talk to ghosts or whatever, which I was watching that one time, they were in an ancient Chinese lair.
Chinese people have layers, tomb, I don't know what Chinese people have, but they were in one of these and they're walking around and they're looking for a ghost and they got like that little boom, boom, you know, ghost detector thing they have because they sell those, I think it's sharper image if you're looking for one, if you think you have a ghost in your closet or something, boom, boom, boom, and then this 2,000 year old Chinese ghost comes over and says, get out and they freak out and they run and you're like, oh my goodness, there's a ghost and then you're like, wait, that ghost spoke English. So that was weird. Like this Chinese guy, he's been dead for a long time so he's got time to read and he's like, I'm tired of all these Americans coming in and poking around, and I need to learn English so that I can freak him out because every time I whisper Chinese things, they're just like, what was that? So he learned English just to get rid of, but no, the Bible, we're not super okay with spiritual things but the Bible is.
Like this Chinese guy, he's been dead for a long time so he's got time to read and he's like, I'm tired of all these Americans coming in and poking around, and I need to learn English so that I can freak him out because every time I whisper Chinese things, they're just like, what was that? So he learned English just to get rid of, but no, the Bible, we're not super okay with spiritual things but the Bible is. The Bible is very clear that there are spiritual powers, spiritual things that we cannot see,
That there is an enemy on a cosmic level, that Satan is real, he was created by God, he is not as powerful as God, it's not a yin and yang thing but he is real, demons are real, the Bible is very clear about that, doesn't go into explaining a whole lot of how they work, what they do because the Bible is very focused on Jesus all the time and the Bible is very clear that Jesus has authority and power over these spiritual beings and at no point does the Bible get demon focused although they are there. So Jesus shows up though and he heals people and he casts out demons and he heals paralytics
And he lets blind people see again and I always just kind of thought this was like something he did on his way to the cross and it was just something he kind of, he did because he was God and he could and so while he was here he might as well heal people because it would be kind of rude not to because he can and so when people ask he should that's only, just good manners I always just kind of felt like it was that or maybe it was just he was going to show us that he was God and so like by healing someone
He shows us that he's God but I always felt like they were separate things I always felt like teaching, telling people about the gospel and healing people and even the spiritual warfare stuff which is what the stuff dealing with demons and stuff gets called a lot that they were separate things and that the kingdom was kind of somewhere over here but the truth is when Jesus heals somebody he's actually just pointing to the work that he's going to do on the cross when he casts out an evil spirit he's just pointing to the work that he's going to do
On the cross because all he's doing is advancing his kingdom against the domain of darkness which is sin and the effects of sin which is death and pain and brokenness and so when Jesus walks around on earth healing people when he walks around on earth meeting needs of those who are hungry and broken and outcasts when he walks around on earth welcoming people in who are isolated all he's doing is in every way advancing his kingdom against the bigger problem
Which is darkness pain sin Satan death so when Jesus raises someone from the dead it's not a parlor trick or just something to show that he's God it's actually what he's going to do on the cross which is reverse the effects of sin which bring about all these things so Jesus walks around doing this on earth and it's not separate from from the the kingdom
And it's not separate from his work on the cross so Jesus let me just this is helpful to understand Jesus when he goes to the cross inaugurates his kingdom when he walked around on earth he begins to proclaim that the kingdom's coming when he goes to the cross and he dies and then three days later rises again he inaugurates the kingdom which means that the kingdom exists now
And on that bumper video it said the kingdom is already but not yet that's a good way to say it the kingdom already is here but it's not yet fully consummated it's not yet fully rationalized realized pretty sure what I just said before that didn't make any sense but if it sounded good it did alright moving on that he inaugurated the kingdom it's already
But not yet but it's not fully yet realized which means that when he returns and destroys all of his enemies and welcomes those who've had their sin covered that at that point is when every tear will be wiped away from every eye there won't be pain brokenness sin anymore everything will be grace mercy love it'll be back to the way it's supposed to
So when Jesus walks around on earth and he heals somebody he's pointing to what he's going to do on the cross and he's pointing to how the kingdom's going to eventually work because there is no cancer in the fully consummated kingdom there is no brokenness death and pain in the kingdom and so he's saying when he tells somebody I'm healing you and the kingdom of God has come near he's saying this is what it's going to be like and this is what
I'm going to accomplish on the cross and that's that's how he advances against the actual enemy so he wasn't wasting time he was actually moving his kingdom forward every time he healed somebody every time he pushed the enemy back because he's advancing against the domain of darkness okay so chapter 5
Says that Jesus seeing the crowds he went up on a mountain and when he sat down his disciples came to him and then he says a bunch of stuff that we don't that seems the exact opposite of how we would understand the world to work so he says blessed are you who are hungry blessed are you who mourn blessed are you who are persecuted and it's like I thought blessed meant good stuff that sounds terrible
But what his point is is that his kingdom is working in an opposite way it's an upside down kingdom as opposed to the way we would think the world works that he didn't come to make everybody happy and whole now that he didn't come to fix everything now but he came to take care of our big problem which is that there is brokenness that there is pain in the world
And that it's caused by sin and he's saying blessed are you who are hungry now because you'll realize that there's brokenness pain and you'll turn and find me but verse 13 is what we're going to look at how we get to be involved in the kingdom you are the salt of the earth but if salt has lost its taste how shall its saltiness be restored it is no longer good for anything except to be thrown
Out and trampled under people's feet you are the light of the world okay who's the light of the world who's the light of the world you are okay who's he talking to disciples people listening to him followers of his who else does the bible say is the light of the world Jesus yeah we're in church
That's the correct answer to most everything Jesus okay so Jesus is the light of the world and says that he's the light of the world and then at this point he turns and looks at his followers and says you are the light of the world Jesus is the light of the world his followers are the light of the world that's a pretty
Amped up promotion for those who would follow Jesus so that's an important role if it's what he fulfills as well and then he says that his church that the people that follow him are this he says you are the light of the world a city set on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a stand
And it gives light to all in the house in the same way let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven okay Jesus' kingdom advances against the domain of
Darkness and then he looks at his followers and says you're the light of the world just right after he's walked around healed he's gathered big crowds and he's shown how the kingdom advances against darkness he then looks at his followers and says you're a part of this this is what you're supposed to do
This is what this is supposed to look like you're the light of the world we're advancing against darkness you know there's something great about light before we get into that God cheats just so y'all know when he gives illustrations when Jesus gives illustrations about who he is and what he did he created everything
We're going to look at some parables he gives next week about what he's like see when we're going to give an illustration about something we have to think okay I guess it's kind of like a tree and we have to think about what already exists but when God was creating things he got
To make it however he wanted to so when he says you're you're like light or I'm light or I advanced against darkness he already set up how darkness and light work so it's really not fair does that make sense like he created it so it gets to work how he wants it to work when God says that he's lighter that he advances against
Darkness do you know what's beautiful about that light never has a hard time getting rid of darkness it just doesn't he don't turn on a light in a room and it's got to take five minutes for it to push the darkness out of the room that's not how that works darkness is the absence of
Light so Jesus's kingdom advances against a domain of darkness and his followers are a city on a hill and the light of the world that we actually have because of Jesus the ability to advance against the domain of darkness when he says they're a city on a hill in that day when you needed something
A city was a great place to go it had walls and there was safety in a city there were certain cities that were actually cities that there were cities of refuge so if something was bad was going on or you did something bad you could actually run to the city and it was basically like home base so like you made it in the city like I can't get me I'm in the city you got to have a
Trial now you can't just kill me out there in the street and that was what they did so you went to the city to have fairness to have rule to have law to have protection if you needed something you went to a city because the city would have it and so what he says is that the church is a city on a hill that can't be hidden and that good works are to point to the father that people should see the
Church's good works and point to the father and give glory to our father in heaven so what Jesus says is that he's got a kingdom that advances against darkness in all forms and he's got a church that exists on the mission to advance that that we get to be a part of the same advancement against brokenness against pain against poverty against hunger against the enemy's work to bring about strife and pain and hurt that's what the church gets to do
And he empowers that and he accomplishes it but that's us so very practically how does that work what do we get to do what does that look like as we join Jesus on his mission I just want to cover a few things just to make just to make this this very practical so it's practical so we can understand what it looks like for us to join him to be a part of advancing the kingdom against darkness so we see that he heals people we see that Jesus so he meets
Physical needs we see at different times where Jesus feeds people so he meets physical needs that way as well he talks to his followers about being generous about giving things to people who are in need he also deals with spiritual ramifications of things so he addresses sin he addresses spiritual enemies so like we get to join in all of these things as the kingdom advances first thing we do real practical ways we pray the church gets to pray which
Is just us understanding that we don't accomplish this that we need God to show up that we need Jesus to be a part of moving this kingdom forward that if this is going to advance against the domain of darkness if we're going to push back darkness in West Columbia and Columbia we're going to push back darkness where we live we're going to need Jesus to show up so we pray we understand that it's what he accomplished on the cross for us that moves things forward anyway so we pray as the church we pray we give generously
Which means that as followers of Jesus we realize that he left his throne to give everything on our behalf to die in our place for our sins and so that everything we have is now held with an open hand it's his and it's whatever he wants us to use it for and the Bible says that that we've already been given everything in Christ and you know what that means it means you have nothing to gain you've already been given everything in Jesus and you have nothing to lose because you've already been getting everything in Jesus and so Christians are generous we give generously we open our wallets we
Write checks we help pay for things for people we give to local churches we give to missionaries we we give we pay for food we give generously if we own something it we share it we serve just means we give up our time our energy and our effort to push back darkness which means that it's Christians run soup kitchens do hospice care run clinics because Jesus did that because Jesus met physical needs that way because Jesus said that he didn't come to be served but to serve and so we get to join in the kingdom advancing as we push back the tangible effects of sin which is sickness and pain and hunger so Christians get to join in and advance the kingdom in a small way when we do these
Things we fight for relationships it's sin that tears up relationships every relationship you've ever had go poorly is due to sin and nothing else unforgiveness saying mean things to each other being too prideful to to communicate once something went poorly and so Christians know that Jesus overcame way more to have a relationship with us overcame everything and so we fight for relationships we're not okay with awkwardness just so you know that's a rule for Christians that's a rule here we're not okay with awkwardness not awkwardness like man that person makes conversations awkward because they breathe through their mouth not like that awkwardness like there's something weird between us and we're not
Going to talk about it awkwardness like they hurt my feelings but I'm not going to say anything we don't we don't that's that's not okay amongst Christians because we fight for relationships because Jesus gave us the ability to overcome it means that we fight for relationships with people who don't seem to have friends we befriend them because we know that Jesus went out of his way to befriend us who weren't very friendly he did not sit in heaven and say man that chad is one cool cat I want to get to know him he didn't he didn't say it about any of you either he overcame it for us and befriended us and cares about us because he's great so we fight for relationships we tell everyone about Jesus so it starts off by saying that he went around proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and that's what we do we tell everyone about Jesus we tell
Everyone about the hope and the life that can be found in him we tell everyone about how he's affected our hearts on a very real basis we tell everyone about the fact that we're messed up we can't fix this but Jesus came live the way we were supposed to died in our place he lived the way we were supposed to and died the way we were supposed to so that we don't have to die the way that we that we were supposed to and that we can have his way that he lived applied to our account we tell everyone about Jesus it is not an invitation we talked about last week it's not an invitation to come be amazing it's not an invitation to come have good morals it's not an invitation to come be really good behaviorers it's not it's an invitation that repentance is I'm messed up I need Jesus okay so we pray we give we serve we fight for relationships and we tell everyone about Jesus and you want to know
What's true we can do that anywhere we get to be a part of the kingdom anywhere I was having a conversation earlier this morning God wants Christians to be contractors and to stay contractors God wants Christians to be doctors and nurses and to stay doctors and nurses God wants Christian bus drivers Christian school teachers Christian plumbers there's no hierarchy in Christianity when it comes to following Jesus so it's not like foreign missionary Pope I don't know where you come from Pope foreign missionary bishop pastor Sunday school teacher deacon others who follow Jesus and read their Bible some others who don't read their Bible like it's not there's not like categories for it and God isn't like if you do this you're more special that's not how it works now there's supposed to be pastors and missionaries and they're supposed to be leaders in the church but they're supposed to be Christians who go to school forever
And then go do something else that they learn how to do they're supposed to be Christians who go to school to learn how to do something and then go do something that has nothing to do with what they learn how to do and they use that job to pay off their school debt and that's what because we can do this anywhere we can be a part of the kingdom anywhere you can do that at work you can pray for your co-workers say my boss is an idiot we'll pray for him most bosses are idiots pray for your heart while you pray for him see how you can so you pray you pray for your co-workers you pray that Jesus would show up that he would work in your in your place of work you can give this hey let me take you out to lunch hey I brought an extra honey bun in my lunch you want it people love carbohydrates give be generous you can give you can go out of your way to serve people when you hear hey I realize you're having car trouble can I can I help with that you
Can serve so if there's car trouble and you know how to fix it you can serve if you don't know how to fix it you can be like here's 10 bucks good luck is the gas tank on empty no I'm out of my expertise level here's $10 talk to a pro like you you can serve you can hey I've realized you're coming up on a deadline can I stay late and help you do that you can fight for relationships which means you show up early you stay late you talk to people and not just the people that are going to help you advance you can you can when you have the opportunity for someone who nobody else at work likes which every work has those people if if your work doesn't it might be you you can go out of your way to talk to those people to to share a time with them to say hey to them to ask them how they're doing you can fight for relationships at work and you can tell everyone about Jesus when you get the opportunity to share about Jesus when you get the opportunity to tell them about
What you have in Christ and the truth is if you're doing those other things you'll get opportunities and if you're doing those other things people won't mind listening to it because it won't be like hey I know I don't know you and I've never talked to you but here's this pamphlet or let me shout things at you it'll be no that's just who I am this affects how I exist in the world let me talk to you about Jesus you can do that at school you can pray pray for your the other students you can pray for your your instructors teachers professors you can give you can hey notice you miss class you don't copy my notes you can serve you can go out of your way to help people hey I'm doing pretty good in this section I don't mind helping I don't mind helping you study this hey I'm doing terrible in this section will you help me study this which isn't serving
But you may need to ask somebody that some point fight for relationships you can sit with the people that nobody sits with you can talk to people in class that nobody talks to you can do this anywhere and God wants us to do it everywhere that we are the light of the world which means that where you are God has you there on purpose some of you think my job is terrible and I want a different Job and God's holding on to your collar and saying nope I got something more important for you to do than just make money I got something more real and eternal and long lasting for you to do than just get a degree I got way better things for you to do than just play a sport I've got you here for a reason and we can do that everywhere you want to know what's
Beautiful about what we talked about last week that we approach the kingdom through repentance we're gonna be terrible at that there are gonna be days where we're the worst at it we don't pray we don't give we don't serve somebody tries to talk to us we're like hey shut up I'm not here to be your friend and then we get to repent and God doesn't love us more on the days that we get it right and he doesn't love us less on the days when we get it wrong we get to follow him in repentance Jesus has already accomplished everything on our behalf for those of us who placed our faith in him he's already done all of this for us and he's invited us into a cosmic level world-changing mission you see the disciples when Jesus rose from the dead and they look at him in
Acts chapter 1 and they say at this time you're gonna set up your kingdom you're gonna overthrow the Romans now and he says not now I've got a mission for you more people need to be invited in because at that point Jesus could have set up his kingdom and he would have saved all the people who knew him at that point and he would have destroyed everybody else and he hasn't done that yet because he wants all of us that know him to be everywhere infecting the world with the truth that we have in Jesus and spreading the kingdom band's gonna come up and play we're gonna sing and then we get to go be the church we get to go be a part of God's cosmic level mission we get to be a part of pushing back darkness by sharing food by praying for people by building relationships by serving people in tangible ways we get to be a part of
The kingdom advancing in our city every day and it's beautiful that everything that you do gets to have a level of intentionality to it now that you didn't understand or comprehend or or know or fully think about all the time we actually get to be a part of the kingdom advancing in our city when we go to work this week when we're having a random conversation with someone this week I'm gonna pray we're gonna sing God thank you that you did not solve the problem of the Romans I thank you that you showed up to handle a cosmic level brokenness in the world that you have a better vantage point than we do so that you address sin God I thank you that you've invited us into that that in your grace you didn't destroy evil and in your grace you're not coming back just yet so that we continue to to serve and love and advance your kingdom
In tangible ways and point people to Jesus we love you we thank you I pray that your Holy Spirit would empower us to be that to be a city on a hill to be a light in the world and God help us repent as we follow you we love you we praise you in Jesus name amen house and let's go 감사합니다 you you you you you you you